ABSTRACT
In recent years, media research has enjoyed explosive growth as the centrality of the media to contemporary societies has increasingly imposed itself on our consciousness. It has become more and more obvious that, with the internationalization of media institutions, products and consumption, media research cannot be limited to what happens within given, national frontiers; at the same time, the rapidly expansive nature of recent academic investigation, while most often still profoundly steeped in national traditions, has been on an increasingly international scale as the field entrenches itself more widely in all continents.
