This book uses newspapers and TV listings to present an overview of changes in European public spheres over the last fifty years. It explores how and why the media decisively influence most aspects of society with in-depth analyses of structural changes in press and broadcasting, changing relations between media and changes in media policies.

Foreword – Ib Bondebjerg & Peter Golding   Preface – Jostein Gripsrud & Lennart Weibull   Public spheres, societal shifts and media modulations – Peter Dahlgren   Changing media, changing society: Four decades of European newspapers – Lennart Weibull & Åsa Nilsson   50 years of European television: An essay – Jostein Gripsrud   The public reception of early television: When television was new in the Nordic countries – Taisto Hujanen & Lennart Weibull   Televisualization of the popular press: An eye-catching trend of the late twentieth century’s media – Juha Herkman   British media and regulatory change: The antinomies of policy – John Corner   French media: Policy regulation and the public sphere – Josiane Jouët   Changing media and public sphere in Turkey: The role of the state, market and the EU candidacy – Mine Gencel Bek   Reconsidering the paradox of parochialism and the shrinking news agenda –Biltereyst, Daniel & Live Desmet   Fakty vs. Wiadomości: On competition and confusion in Polish TV news – Wieslaw Godzic   When the elite press meets the rise of commercial culture – Dominique Pasquier   The sounds of change: representations of music in European newspapers 1960-2000 – Klaus Bruhn Jensen & Peter Larsen   Celebrity culture and the public sphere: The tabloidization of power – Graham Murdock