Boundaries of Media Systems in a Converging Media Environment

This paper examines the relevance of national-bound media systems in a context of globalization, technological advancements, and converging media markets. While the last ten years of Internet development have offered numerous opportunities for media markets, they have also raised many economic and regulatory challenges, which soon became globalized matters that changed the relation between media markets and the national actors they were operating along. The paper raises the issue of the economic and regulatory challenges governments face in protecting plurality and diversity in the transnational environment, while on the other hand, it considers the challenges of a pan-European framework attending to the needs of markets with various national roots impacting media practices. It brings to attention the several various stances scholars take in the comparative media studies debate and, leveraging on the lack of an established opinion on whether nation-state actors are still shaping media systems. It also raises the question of the impact national contexts have over media markets in a converging media environment. The comparative research takes a qualitative and exploratory approach over the multiple case studies of European markets. Three cases were selected based on their belonging to the three media systems, the Polarized Pluralist model, the Democratic Corporatist model, and the Liberal model. Media markets of the Netherlands, Romania, and the United Kingdom are assessed through document analysis and expert interviews. The paper found that while structure and the diversity of the markets are marked by global events, the way businesses operate differs in accordance with the characteristics of traditional media systems. It concludes that while on the regulatory, economic and performance levels some shifts induced by the convergence of the markets are linear across the countries, differences can be observed in terms of political independence, state interference, and attraction of foreign capital. Media-political relations rooted in historical and cultural traditions are still clearly impacting the conduct of media businesses. However, features related to the socio-economic conditions, such as media literacy or technological developments, appear to be the ones leading the new developments and distinguishing the markets. It remains unclear whether in the near future media-political relations will become totally obsolete in the face of unbounded communication flows.