Born Losers or Flexible Adjustment? The Media Policy Dilemma of Small States

Abstract

Increased attention is being paid to `smallness' as an analytical dimension as processes of internationalization and cross-media networking accelerate. To assure a certain `room for manoeuvre' of small states' media and to enhance regional identities in Europe — in some respects counteracting the integrating power of the European Community and associated market forces — political action on various levels is required. Small states' media operate under special and difficult conditions of small internal markets, shortages of resources, external dependency and vulnerability, and pressures of political corporatism. In order to preserve small states' media culture in such circumstances, media policy concepts should include integrated, cross-media oriented and `media-ecological' elements.