ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the history of the field of media and communication studies in Croatia, a post-socialist new democracy in Central Europe. The field of communication and media studies in Croatia derived from the humanities, mainly the critical theory approaches to mass culture, but the end of the 1960s it had developed a predominantly social scientific approach. The chapter shows how the institutional conditions in Croatia, different from the other countries of Eastern Europe, contributed to disciplinary development of communication and media studies. Eastern Europe shares the Western rationalist and individualist epistemology, building on the shared foundation laid by Christianity and the Enlightenment, and other common historical trajectories. Communism was introduced in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union at different times and in a different manner. The chapter concludes with a brief sketch of the present state of the field of communication and media studies in Eastern Europe, opening into a view on a future Eastern European research agenda.
