Books

Palgrave Macmillan has published Media Pluralism and Diversity, edited by Miklos Sukosd, Robert Picard and Peggy Valcke, and based on a former research project done by CMDS. In the western world, a diverse and pluralistic media landscape is deemed essential for democracy. But how universal is media pluralism as a concept underpinning media policies?

Sejal Parmar, core faculty member of CMDS and Assistant Professor of Law at CEU's Department of Legal Studies has contributed to the Council of Europe's new book, Journalism at Risk, in which ten experts from different backgrounds examine the role of journalism in democratic societies.

Discussions surrounding the role of the internet in society are dominated by terms such as internet freedom, surveillance, cybersecurity, and, most prolifically, cyber war. But behind the rhetoric of cyber war is an ongoing state-centered battle for control of information resources. Shawn Powers and Michael Jablonski conceptualize this real cyber war as the utilization of digital networks for geopolitical purposes, including covert attacks against another state’s electronic systems, but also, and more importantly, the variety of ways the internet is used to further a state’s economic and military agendas. 

Building on examples drawn from the Arab Spring, the shaping of the Internet in China, Iran's perception of foreign broadcasting, and Russia's media interventions, Monroe Price's book, Free Expression, Globalism and the New Strategic Communication, published by Cambridge University Press, exposes the anxieties of loss of control, on the one hand, and the missed opportunities for greater freedom, on the other.