Post-Communism and the Media in Eastern Europe

Since the collapse of communism in 1989 eastern Europe has experienced a fundamental transformation in its economic, political and social institutions. Observers of the region have often viewed the media as little more than instruments of propaganda in the hands of the party-states which can now be easily remade into independent sources of communication. However, the function and effects of the media within communist and post-communist eastern Europe have been more diverse than such generalizations would lead us to believe. This study, an investigation of the media in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria by American and East European scholars, seeks to outline both the general legacies of communism that confront media reform in eastern Europe, as well as point to how the specific interaction between the media, state, society and market has led to the development of particular and unique dynamics in each case.