International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Media communication, mass communication, political communication, and other aspects of social communication represent a dynamic academic field in contemporary central and eastern Europe and Russia. In particular, communication on the societal level, which was the subject of the most visible and remarkable changes during the 1990s (reintroduction of “free” media and deep structural change of the media system, establishment of media and advertising markets, consequences of the commercialization of media), as well as some traces of older tradition and huge inspiration from western Europe and the USA, led to the establishment of communication and media studies as a new field of academic interest in many universities in the region. Some development can be found in studies of interpersonal and organizational communication, too, but those areas are traditionally covered by established fields, in which they have largely remained. Various processes of social communication, including media and related issues (especially →  Journalism ), have attracted the attention of various disciplines, but communication did not become a self-sustaining field of academic research and university education in most of the central and eastern European countries (including the former Soviet Union) before the beginning of the 1990s. This does not mean that some topics understood as part of communication research ... log in or subscribe to read full text