Abstract
Since the 1980s, European public broadcasting service (PBS) institutions have faced a range of challenges that resulted in profound changes to their positions in respective national media systems. These shifts are typically discussed in terms of economic and technological developments, including the growth of transnational and commercial broadcasting and the rise of digital media, all of which undermined the initial monopoly of PBS over national broadcasting spheres. Yet, as this edited volume reminds us, the PBS has also experienced a shift in the way it relates to questions of ethno-cultural diversity, not least because of the growth of immigrant populations across Europe in recent decades. This collection provides a useful attempt to chart some of the key traits of this transformation, using a combination of general reflections on pan-European trends as well as a series of national case studies. Contributions to the first part of the volume include a conceptual mapping of practices of representation in relation to audiences, texts and the idea of the ‘public’ (Malik); a discussion of the rise of the discourse of cultural diversity in European broadcasting policies (Horsti); and finally, an examination of European regulatory frameworks for cultural diversity (McGonagle). The second part of the volume turns to national cases studies which – although considerably varied – cover exclusively western and northern parts of Europe: the Netherlands (Awad and Engelbert), Belgium (Dhoest), Ireland (Titley), Sweden (Hultén), Finland (Horsti), Norway (Bjørnsen) and Estonia (Jõessar and Rannu). The final contribution (Jakubowicz) provides a synthesis of key questions emerging from the case studies, and offers some reflections on the distinctive experiences of public broadcasting in parts of Europe not covered by the volume (most notably Southern Europe), as well as elsewhere in the world.