Abstract
The editors of the Routledge Handbook of Media Law have sold themselves short by marketing their work as a mere “handbook.” More compendium than synopsis, the work offers thirty treatises and research papers on global media law and policy from a comparative and socio-legal perspective. Although it lacks chapters devoted to intermediary online liability and copyright law, it is, nevertheless, a superb wide-ranging scholarly survey. One is hard pressed to find a work covering transnational media law and policy research and controversies with comparable depth and breadth, which should not come as a surprise considering its editors’ credentials.
In 1996, Monroe E. Price and Stefaan Verhulst co-founded the Programme in Comparative Media Law & Policy at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford. Price, the Joseph and Sadie Danciger Professor of Law and Director of the Howard M. Squadron Program in Law, Media and Society at the Cardozo School of Law, also serves as director of the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communication’s Center for Global Communication Studies (CGCS).
Verhulst, now co-founder and Chief Research and Development Officer of the Governance Laboratory at New York University, previously served as consultant to various international and national organizations, including the Council of Europe, European Commission, UNESCO, and World Bank. He was also a founder and an editor of the International Journal of Communications Law and Policy, and the Communications Law in Transition Newsletter.
Libby Morgan, associate director of the CGCS from 2009 to 2012, co-edited Measures of Press Freedom and Media Contributions to Development: Evaluating the Evaluators (2011) with Price and Susan Abbott.
In their 2008 journal article, “Comparative Media Law Research and its Impact on Policy,” Price and Verhulst argued that “Only with a comparative and interdisciplinary grasp of the massive changes taking place can there be a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the impact of media changes on democratic values and economic development” throughout the world. The handbook, divided into five sections, reflects that supposition, as the editor’s note in the book’s introduction. Most chapters include a survey of leading case and regulatory law from the last twelve years or so ending in 2012.
The aim of section I, “Media Policy and Institutional Design,” the editors explain, is “to provide a better understanding of the institutional forces, actors, or networks that generate media rules, norms, and standards, and that perpetuate them or foster change.” To that end, Lesley Hitchens, a law professor at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, discusses the differences in the U.S. and U.K. regulatory policy of product placement. The chapters in this section are more likely to appeal to social scientists than to lawyers.
Contributors to section II, “Media Policy, Free Speech and Citizenship,” examine how nations with free expression traditions have responded to the Internet. For example, in the chapter “Media Policy, Free Speech and Citizenship,” Joan Barata compares the U.S. First Amendment liberal tradition, the free expression principles of Canada, and most European Countries, noting that “both the United States and the EU have established . . . a regulatory model of intermediary liability based on two main principles: notice and takedown; and liability exemption.” Barata is a law professor at the Blanquerna Communications School at the Universitat Ramon Llull in Barcelona, Spain.
The chapters in section III, “Media Policy and Comparative Perspectives,” focus on non-Western nations and regions. Helmi Noman, for instance, discusses faith-based censorship of the Internet in majority Muslim nations in “In the Name of God.” Noman is a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, and a research affiliate of Harvard University Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
The contributors to section IV, “Media Policy and Media Governance,” focus on novel theories of media governance. For instance, in “Governing Media through Technology: The Empowerment Perspective,” Antonios Broumas points to Iceland’s successful experiment in allowing its citizens to “crowd source” the amending of their constitution in 2012 as an example of how “technology constitutes the key of sovereignty in modern media.” Broumas is a technology lawyer and digital rights activist.
In section V, “Media Policy and Technological Transformation,” the contributors tackle, among other topics, privacy and social media, and network neutrality. In “To ‘be let alone’ in Social Media: The Market and Regulation,” Katherine Sarikakis and Dimitris Tsapogas contrast and compare the United States, Canadian, and European efforts to protect users’ privacy through regulation and self-regulatory schemes. Sarikakis holds the Chair of Media Industries, Media Organization, and Media Governance at the University of Vienna. Tsapogas is a doctoral student at the same university.
Overall, the Routledge Handbook of Media Law is an indispensable resource for anyone seeking to understand the intersection of media, law, and society in a global context in the digital age.