ABSTRACT
This chapter explains that media policy pursues the goal of alleviating the current neo-liberal media order, which includes favouring private-commercial industries and leaving them to negotiate important issues among themselves. Policy reactions to these undesired effects of the crisis include not only establishing public service institutions or granting subsidies but also relying on forms of self-regulation or governance allowing the industries to find their own solutions. The chapter talks about the qualitative document analysis that focus on legal and judicial actions in media policy, as well as semi-structured interviews with media policy makers and stakeholders in Austria, Canada, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. It analyses the government-initiated self-regulation, and examines a qualitative analysis of media policy documents published from 1999 to 2012 in the countries. In Germany, state-initiated self-regulation has gained importance over the last decade as well; however, it was implemented in institutionalized forms.
