Abstract
Globalisation taken together with technological change is often assumed to make the state redundant generally, and this assumption holds true for some media policy work too, emphasising as it does the transnational character of media flows. At the other end of the spectrum is the idea that the state remains central as a locus of policy and of media landscapes, which are first and foremost national. This book aims to give both the national and transnational their proper due stressing the political diversity of state actors and their varying ability to control their national communication environments. One central claim is that neoliberalism is not the only concept that can help to make sense of national media policies as states compete with one another as attractive places for transnational media investment through offering subsidies, tax breaks and so on. This points to the rather pragmatic actions of states eager to boost employment and tax returns in often intricate ways. The first chapters are more theoretical in nature, reviewing competing conceptions of the state and its role in contemporary media and society. The remaining chapters focus on the contemporary role of the state in media developments in different countries and/or regions: China, the European Union, Latin America, the Arab Middle East, Zimbabwe and Central and Eastern Europe.