ABSTRACT
Media policy and regulation has adapted with increasing rapidity to changes in the organisation, delivery and consumption of media. But policy has also been a key force driving change, and regulation always influences the circumstances in which media services are provided. We have examined different perspectives on the values that should guide media policies and traced how some of the more settled arrangements for organising and regulating mass media have been challenged and transformed, especially since the 1980s. This chapter maps key changes in communications regulation and then examines national variations and transnational influences in selected policy areas of media ownership, broadcasting, and trade in audiovisual services to ask: how has national policy and policy making changed, especially since the 1980s and in the context of digitalisation and convergence from the 1990s? How is media policy being reshaped in the context of globalisation and internationalisation? Has the national level of media regulation diminished in scope, relevance and influence? Is there growing homogenisation in Western media policy?
