The book aims at analyzing driving factors determining journalism and media development in Europe. Focussing on political, economical, technical, and cultural conditions in various European countries - including new EU member states - this volume gives insight into the functions and dysfunctions of modern journalism.

Although the book will contain both country specific reports and cross-national articles, we want to avoid pure "state-of-the-art" articles with mere information about numbers of TV channels, newspapers etc. Analyses should go beyond traditional descriptive studies sometimes found in European media handbooks. The analyses should rather focus on the consequences and implications political, economical, technical, and cultural conditions exert on journalism, journalistic products, journalistic work and media development preferably under a functional perspective.