International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics - Volume 9, Issue 2, 2013

This paper traces the transformation of India’s telecommunications and media industries in the context of neo-liberal policies pursued by the state since 1991 to establish the supremacy of the market.

The growth of the capitalist enterprises, their expansion abroad, their entanglement with foreign capital and the closer ties to the multinationals are some of the features of this historic process. While the evidence indicates impressive short-term gains for the middle and upper classes, the larger structural questions linger. Nearly 400 million Indians out of the billion-plus population are languishing in crushing poverty as they attempt to climb up the economic ladder and grab the ephemeral promises made by the new, fast globalizing economy. The social costs of this economy, in which post-colonial India’s vision of a fair and just society are abandoned, have resulted in various upheavals and an unstable political economy.

This paper probes into the institutional arrangements and the processes through which state and non-state actors engage with and define media policy in Greece. The development of the media and media regulation in Greece has been characterized for years by strong state intervention mostly in the pursuit of particularistic interests. Presently, technological developments and straitened economic conditions transform the media context and create potential for a re-appraisal of the state’s media policy. Drawing on recent regulatory developments concerning the passage to digital terrestrial television and the restructuring of public audiovisual media services, the analysis identifies and discusses the main features of the policy-making process, focusing on its institutional stability, policy objectives, accessibility, transparency and sources of information.

This article critically evaluates the increasing restrictions on freedom of press in Turkey by giving examples and discussing cases in the last decade. The ownership structure of the media, legal constraints on journalists, self-censorship, media owners’ close links with the political establishment and erosion of editorial independence are the chronic diseases of the media sector. The panacea might be social media as an unfettered source of news with the vacuum in mainstream media coverage of civil antigovernment movements such as Gezi Park protests.

As Europe is facing a continuous financial and, for many, political and social crisis, long-standing issues of European identity, solidarity and democracy reappear more pronounced than before. In these times, often, the historical developments that have given rise to questioning the European project, its legitimacy and potential future, as well as the treatment of these questions by its political and executive helm are not adequately understood. The role of a European ‘common space’ in terms of debate but also in political action and direction is inextricably connected to the question of legitimacy of the EU and, often, conflicting visions about its raison d’ etre. Historically, the creation of an EU public sphere has been confused with distinct goals of political mobilization for electoral purposes. The strategies developed to advance a broader – and ultimately deeper – sense of belonging have been idealistic, insufficient and muddled owing to lack of political vision and resources. Contextualizing this historical ‘baggage’ with reference to the legacy of invisibility and transparency, the article reviews the politics behind strategic communication of the EU towards its citizens in the shape of Plan D, the Lisbon Treaty’s citizen initiative and the development of EU media policy constrained by ambiguous and volatile relations between the EU and the media.

Women in political leadership are imprisoned in a double-bind communication: when they perform and dress along feminine patterns, they might be looked as deficient actors in the hard field of politics. When they refuse typical female looks and submit to male dress code, their performance is commented as conspicuous. The global visual political communication in media sends clear signals: nothing changes. Women are still the exception, ‘the other’. The visualized lose-lose situation for female politicians is conceived as symbolical violence. In this article the central piece of clothing - the dark suit – is discussed under cultural perspective, along macro-structural principles of the gender order, as instrument in the repetitive practice of exclusion in politics and within the distribution of media pictures. A visual discourse analysis - a ‘vis-course analysis’ - of international group photos from political events like summits traces fashion practices marking the fields of masculinity and power.