Introduction: Normalising Media Regulation?

Abstract

Digitisation, international agreements, converging services, proliferating platforms and the prospects of additional services are all affecting the conduct of media regulation worldwide, transforming the ways media regulation is considered and debated by scholars, activists and players alike. In these circumstances, the range of institutions concerned with media regulation has expanded. Important policy innovations are just as likely to be recommended by the Productivity Commission in its inquiry into broadcasting regulation or the High Court in its decision to count New Zealand content as Australian content as they are to be made by relevant departments and authorities with carriage for broadcasting regulation. These new circumstances, which can also be seen in the various European Union directives affecting national broadcasting systems in Europe, can be viewed as part of a wider challenge to normalise media regulation. While normalisation of the media industries is by no means assured, what has happened is that the cultures within which media regulation is discussed and debated are changing profoundly.