Press governance: A new concept for analyzing press regulation

Abstract

For several years now, the term governance enjoys great popularity among researchers and practitioners alike (Benz 2004; Bevir 2009; Kersbergen and Waarden 2004; Kooiman 2003; Mayntz 2004; Pierre and Peters 2000; Rhodes 1996; Schuppert 2005; Treib et al. 2007). Communication scholars use the term media governance in order to describe changes in policy-making and regulation in the media sector. Given societal and media change, they call for regulatory reforms such as implementing self- and co-regulation, strengthening citizen participation or developing processes of informal decision-making in (global) networks [for a detailed discussion, see, for example, the special issue of Communication, Culture and Critique, edited by d’Haenens et al. (2010), or Donges (2007a)].