From Media Systems to Media Cultures
Understanding Socialist Television

Proposes an original framework for comparative media research, and uses it to provide fascinating insights into television under communist rule.

Sabina Mihelj (Author), Simon Huxtable (Author)

9781108435598, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 21 January 2021

384 pages, 10 b/w illus. 11 colour illus. 9 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.566 kg

'In this pioneering, deeply researched and remarkably wide-ranging study, Mihelj and Huxtable have brought the insights of media studies to bear on the history of socialist television. They are sensitive to cultural particularities but always alive to comparisons and connections, both between individual socialist countries and between socialist 'East' and liberal democratic 'West'. Historians and theorists of Western media will have much to learn from this book as they reflect on their own fields.' Stephen Lovell, King's College London

In From Media Systems to Media Cultures: Understanding Socialist Television, Sabina Mihelj and Simon Huxtable delve into the fascinating world of television under communism, using it to test a new framework for comparative media analysis. To understand the societal consequences of mass communication, the authors argue that we need to move beyond the analysis of media systems, and instead focus on the role of the media in shaping cultural ideals and narratives, everyday practices and routines. Drawing on a wealth of original data derived from archival sources, programme and schedule analysis, and oral history interviews, the authors show how communist authorities managed to harness the power of television to shape new habits and rituals, yet failed to inspire a deeper belief in communist ideals. This book and their analysis contains important implications for the understanding of mass communication in non-democratic settings, and provides tools for the analysis of media cultures globally.

1. Introduction
2. Media cultures
3. Historical context
4. Varieties of modernity
5. Publications
6. Privacy
7. Transnationalism
8. Everyday time
9. History
10. Extraordinary time
11. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Media, information & communication industries [KNT], Political control & freedoms [JPV], Political structures: totalitarianism & dictatorship [JPHX], Society & culture: general [JF], Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000 [HBLW3]