The Cultural Core of Media Systems

This book provides a theoretical framework and case study to explore how media systems take on the form and coloration given to them by culture and in tandem with the affecting socio-political and economic systems, which are also defined by society’s values, beliefs, and attitudes and even more so by those of its elites.

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This book offers an alternative perspective to the reigning socio-political and economic approaches to evaluating media systems and why and how they function. Peter Gross outlines a cultural model, a "kaleidoscopic cultural prism," for assessing the nature and functioning of these systems. By testing this model in one Eastern European country, Romania, Gross contributes to existing scholarship on media theory, media and transformation, East and Central European media, Romanian media, and East and Central European transformations in general. Awareness of the inherent negatives in the cultural bricolage accumulated over the centuries while Romanians lived under physical, administrative, and ideological dominance of various empires is increasingly sown among the new generations. This reality makes a culture-driven understanding of Romania’s media system even more urgent and meaningful for comprehending the evolving transformation. Scholars of communication, media studies, and Romanian studies will find this book of particular interest.