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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 Eastern European studies will find this book of particular interest.

Media Transformations in the Post-Communist World: Eastern Europe's Tortured Path to Change, edited by Peter Gross and Karol Jakubowicz, is a collection of analyses of Eastern European media by some of the most distinguished scholars in the field. This in-depth exploration shows how despite positive changes after the fall of Communism, the transformations of societal institutions, including the mass media, have turned out to be slow, uncertain, and unsatisfying to many when measured against the admittedly ambiguous and overly Panglossian expectations.This collection offers readers a different view of post-Communist media by examining the mass media's evolution in the region from a more holistic perspective. The contributors to this volume respond to essential questions, including: Is the post-Communist transition and transformation over? When can it be considered over? Each chapter contributes to our understanding of these questions by offering theoretical overviews and country-specific studies.This collection serves as an affirmation that the study of mass media is essential to understanding the nature and workings of democracy in the long-suffering nations of Central and Eastern Europe, with international applications. Media Transformations in the Post-Communist World is an indispensable contribution to the study of Eastern Europe after Communism, and the transformations of mass media in the region.