ABSTRACT
The concept of media accountability has originally been developed vis-à-vis Western democracies. Yet, democratization has opened spaces for media self-regulation in countries formerly characterized by rigid press control, while even in the Global North journalists have been facing increasingly hostile political environments attacking their freedoms. The Global Handbook of Media Accountability sets out to provide the first comparative analysis of media accountability from a worldwide perspective, covering developments across world regions and political regime types. This introduction presents a detailed overview on existing research on media accountability and sets out the framework used within this volume. Assessing context factors that might shape media accountability beyond the West, we also shed light on relevant transnational developments.
