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This chapter presents an overview of the Brazilian regional media groups that are characterized by cross-ownership of media outlets in the four main reference platforms for news coverage: daily print, radio, broadcast television, and Web.

The research uses institutional documents to explore the history and operating mode of the groups that own the 50 best-selling newspapers in the country. The theoretical approach is guided by the notion of “spatialization” applied to business communication by Vincent Mosco, and by the concepts of “region,” “regionality,” and “regionalization” based upon authors aligned with the critical thinking approach in the field of geography.

The study identifies the multiple geographical scales at which these groups operate, as well as their dominant business models and the sources of their owners’ capital. Based on this analysis, it argues that the variables which are applied to the large-circulation media at a national level cannot be automatically transferred to the regional and local levels.

The study of regional media reveals a landscape that has not received adequate attention from communications researchers worldwide. It also points to problems which deserve more investigation and elaboration. This represents a new challenge for media studies, for the political economy of communication, and for the nascent field of geography of communication.

This chapter provides a distinctive and nuanced approach to the Brazilian media system. It can inspire other studies on regional communication which take into account the specificities of their geographic scales.

This chapter offers an historical overview and analysis of US broadcast regulation. It demonstrates how seemingly race-neutral policies – the interpretation of “public interest,” the preference for incumbents, the application of the First Amendment, and the embrace of colorblindness within US media policy – has functioned to entrench White interests in the broadcasting sector. Drawing on critical policy studies and critical race theory, this chapter illuminates how broadcast regulation has been a technology of White privilege, one that has had substantial consequences for the distribution of both material and symbolic resources as well as for the contours of the public sphere in the United States.

Racialization is an important concept when looking at structural mechanisms that perpetuate racial inequalities. The State, and its various organizational spaces of action, is often seen as a site for race to be enacted. Policy sectors such as housing, education, taxation, and immigration have been ripe areas of research that reflect this. However, media policy research has not effectively engaged with this critical conception. Media policy research has been driven by political economy perspectives within the field of Mass Communication and Media Studies, and can benefit from an approach that analyzes it in relation to social science perspectives that focus on processes which constitute, or are constituted by, actors, groups, and organizations. Our hope is that future researchers will find this volume useful in further developing critical studies of media policy that take into account race as a social force.

Introduction – Community media was created as an alternative to the ever-globalising and rapidly monopolised media industry. This media is a unity that does not seek profit, voices the demands and problems of the community it serves, seeks the benefit of the public, and its creators are members of the community. It is seen as a tool for the development of democracy and pluralism, and to increase social impact. The sustainability of this tool has emerged as a debated topic in recent years. Community media can both serve as a tool for sustainable development and can be defined as a part of sustainable communication. The sustainability of community media is all about making the presence of the communicative tools of the community permanent and sustainable, or to insure the continuation of the community’s channels of communication as a part of a specific strategy.

Purpose – In this chapter, the author will discuss the concepts of community media, sustainability and female-oriented non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and then attempt to explain the media usage habits and the factors that affect the sustainability of the preferred channels of the female-oriented NGOs in İzmir.

Methodology – The study has been designed using a case study design based on qualitative research methods. Data have been collected via document analysis and in-depth face-to-face interviews. The data acquired were analysed descriptively.

Findings – Findings from the study show that the financial, content production-related, technical, and legal factors affect the sustainability of community media.

This chapter investigates journalistic practice in Greece during the period of the memoranda (2010–2015). By focussing on press journalism, the research probes journalistic practice and structuration by investigating how communicating with political sources and managing incoming information took place in the significant case of the Greek memoranda. Furthermore, this chapter investigates these practices in order to determine what they can reveal about the Greek press system as well. An innovative multilevel theoretical framework is introduced that combines insights from political economy and framing theory, in order to shed light on journalistic practice in content production, and media system structures. Original data stemming from 12 semistructured interviews with Greek journalists that covered that memoranda are presented, in order to reveal the structuration of Greek journalism and how the structure of the newspaper constraints journalistic practice in content production and in the collection of information from political sources. This chapter ultimately argues that Greek press journalism developed in an even further entrenched political role during and postcrisis, due to the political and economic developments of the crisis and their impact in the press system. This entrenched political role had a significant role in how incoming information regarding the memoranda was managed and what kind of options Greek journalists had when constructing news about the case.

Purpose – It may be time to reformulate the rejection of censorship. Freedom is not the only opposite of, strategic resource against, or antidote to, censorship. Methodology/Approach – This chapter argues against censorship with a Kantian-normative approach (the deontological position of the categorical imperative), using conceptual analysis, constructivism, and international legal scholarship, from the standpoint of a humanity-wide duty to safeguard and promote cultural diversity and biodiversity. Increasingly visible weaknesses of the argument against censorship from the utilitarian standpoint of freedom, a negative argument, can be avoided in this way. Findings – Especially the neoliberal approach to freedom has no provisions against corporate and only little against copyright censorship, which are both becoming increasingly acute. Diversity, on the other hand, both biological and cultural, is argued to be instrumentally good, and intrinsically good, but the latter only if balanced by equality of basic rights. Originality/Value – The resulting moral and legal imperatives are to support, safeguard, and promote diversity, and thus to minimize both censorship in culture and selection/elimination in nature, but only to minimize them, simply because they cannot themselves be eliminated. It is impossible to eliminate elimination. This becomes clear when one considers self- and soft censorship. At least in the wide sense, censorship is inevitable – but sustainable development is impossible without strict minimization of censorship.

In this chapter, the authors focus on a range of Australian news articles selected for their relevance to key themes in the area of child abuse and examine two high profile cases of child abuse deaths that were extensively reported on by the media and led to system reform. Challenges for media reporting on child abuse in Australia including a changing media landscape, lack of available child abuse data and lack of publicly available serious case reviews are discussed. The authors argue that there is a need for attention to be paid to children's resistance and agency in the context of violence and abuse to counter the objectification of children and uphold their rights. Following Finkelhor (2008), the authors argue that media reporting on child abuse in Australia reflects a general approach to child abuse that is fragmented, with different types of abuse viewed as separate from one another, and call for a more integrated understanding of child abuse. The authors highlight the complexity of media responses to child abuse in Australia, noting that while the social problem of child abuse can be misrepresented by the media, media reporting has also triggered significant systemic reform and advocated for children in cases where other systems failed them.

This chapter interrogates the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on print newspaper industry in Zimbabwe. COVID-19 affected the global economy due to various lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed by governments in attempt to stop the spread of the virus. This severely affected media houses, especially newspaper companies that depended on sales as their potential customers stayed home. The pandemic came against the backdrop of constant changes affecting the print media industry. Digitalisation and the resultant fragmentation of the audiences affect the way audiences consume media products. Against this milieu, this chapter investigates how these changes affected or shielded media houses from the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two leading newspaper companies in Zimbabwe, Alpha Media Holdings and Zimbabwe Newspapers Group (1980) Ltd are used as case studies. The chapter deploys both the critical tradition to the study of media economics (political economy of the media) and the theory of the firm to argue that the traditional economic model of depending on casual sales for survival is outdated. The chapter documents the adverse effects of the pandemic on journalism practice highlighting how the impact was more pronounced in the privately owned newspaper companies than in government-controlled ones.