Description: This book tracks the birth, development, and contemporary expansion of media and public relations research in post-socialist societies. Contributors illuminate the current state of the academic fields of communication and media studies and their pertinent explorations in sever...
Review Quotes:
"More people live in post-socialist countries than in the U.S., and nearly as many as in the whole EU. It is, therefore, amazing how little we know about media and public relations research in post-socialist societies.Minielli, Samoilenko, Lukacovic, Finch, and Uecker organized this collection as a much-needed insight into that large part of the world and as a reflection on developments that have been made in this research sector. To understand contemporary media and public relations research on a global level, one must read this book." --Dejan Vercic, University of Ljubljana
"This book takes on a major question of our times: how will nations move from an often-limiting socialist past into a new era that calls for systemic changes in everything from their political to economic and communicative practices? Among the demanding and important challenges being faced is how to adapt to communicating with newly available publics able to choose between competing options in their social, political and economic lives. Of course, such adaptations will differ from country to country, and between different time periods, in part because practitioners in each country will be responding to different cultural and historical experiences. So, any book addressing the broad issue of media and public relations in these emerging contexts will need to accommodate different views born of different challenges and explain differing and sometimes disappointing levels of success. This book's 12 chapters reflect just such differing responses to the challenges faced in the Eastern European context and Russia. For instance, as Samoilenko and Erzikova say in the first chapter on public relations in Russia, "public relations, once a promising force of democratization, has failed to realize its full potential as a full-fledged and self-reliant liaison between state and society."" --Carl H. Botan, George Mason University