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This chapter aims to illustrate how media reform groups in Taiwan and in particular the Media Watch Foundation and the Campaign for Media Reform worked together to engage in media reform movements ranging from the promotion of public media to the campaign against big media mergers. The strategies they utilized are context-sensitive and mostly effective in terms of raising public awareness, setting public agendas and having an impact upon government decisions and policies concerning media freedom and media democratization. These strategies include, among others, engaging in public debates, lobbying the legislature, and where necessary, mobilizing public support in both online and offline protests. However, these strategies have limitations too. Most of all, the mainstream media were usually hostile to media reform movements, and the government was passive in its response to the cause of media reform. To overcome this extremely difficult situation, media activists in Taiwan have taken advantage of new media and social media to pursue their media reform goals and have increasingly engaged in creating more diverse information alternatives to the mainstream media.

Media reform has not been high on the agenda of social reform movements in Israel historically, nor has it emerged as one following the social protests of 2011. All three reform strategies identified by Hackett and Carrol (2006)—internal, alternative media, and structural change—had been tried over the years. It emerges that the only strategy with an impact has been the use of alternative media in its most extreme form: defying the law and launching unlicensed electronic media services. This has been true in particular in the case of radio policy, for which there are a few examples from the 1970s to the 2000s, and cable television.

Media reform is a great and formidable challenge. Across international contexts, reformers are inspired by what the late C. Edwin Baker referred to as the democratic distribution principle for communicative power: “a claim that democracy implies as wide as practical a dispersal of power within public discourse” (Baker, 2007, p. 7). The challenge is made manifest in battles over the future of investigative journalism, media ownership, spectrum management, speech rights, broadband access, network neutrality, the surveillance apparatus, digital literacy and many others waged in pursuit of the normative ideals at the heart of Baker’s vision. At the same time, those committed to media reform confront formidable challenges: entrenched commercial interests and media conglomerates; sometimes powerful, sometimes disorganized and sometimes neoliberal governments; a general public often disenfranchised, digitally illiterate and not focused on issues of media reform; and always, the uphill battle of organization, mobilization and influence that is the work of any activist. In light of these significant challenges, the central question addressed by this volume is: What strategies might be utilized to overcome these obstacles in the pursuit of media reform?

Media reform strategy needs to straddle the intersection of engagement and resistance and to negotiate the myriad trade-offs that confront media reform groups. For example, there is a need to strike a balance between devising solutions and developing ideas, and between building consensus and protecting core principles. Above all, we advocate engagement with hegemonic media and policymaking institutions as public platforms, but resistance to the terms and definitions of policy problems imposed by media and political elites, and to the “logic” of dominant media narratives that serve to reinforce communication power. There is a pressing need to re-articulate media reform as a movement for social justice aligned with other more recognizable groups engaged in resistance to global capitalism. In conjunction with this, there is a need to think laterally about how to campaign effectively with minimal resources; to set up and maintain strategic alliances with civil society groups both within and beyond media activist circles; to focus conceptually on media owners as the primary targets of resistance; and to reach out to both professional and citizen journalists in pursuit of that cause.

The 1940s was a contentious decade for U.S. media policy. Activists, policymakers, and media industries grappled over defining the normative foundations that governed major communication and regulatory institutions. At this time, a reform agenda took shape at both the grassroots social movement level and within elite policy circles. An analysis of the rise and fall of this postwar media reform movement holds at least three key lessons for contemporary media activists. First, it reminds us of the imperative to maintain a strong inside/outside strategy that keeps regulators connected to the grassroots. Second, we learn that media activists retreat on structural reform objectives at their own peril. Finally, we must remember that media reform rises and falls with other political struggles and radical social movements. With these lessons in mind, media reformers should seek to build liberal/left coalitions and, perhaps, a new popular front.

This chapter examines three contemporary media reform initiatives in Anglophone Canada—an annual community event (Media Democracy Day), a campaign organization (OpenMedia.ca), and a specific coalition run campaign (Reimagine CBC)—and presents four insights: Media reform groups need to understand their regional and national context: Organizations need to know the history of media development in their jurisdiction, the current competing power structures and discourses about the media operating there, the work of other media reform groups, and the unique barriers to media reform they face. Media reform movements should seek collaborations and coalitions: Networking and collaborating with other organizations, campaigns and events helps enhance organizational reach and resources, as well as increasing awareness of the need for media reform. Academic institutional support can be particularly important: Support from universities and colleges can help legitimate reform organizations, and add expertise to campaigns, regulatory proceedings and public debates. Media reform movements need to use multiple campaign approaches and modes of engagement: Online campaign tactics combined with off-line traditional communications engages the largest numbers of people. Similarly, campaign goals need to be framed in terms easily grasped by people of different ages and diverse backgrounds and education.

South America has been an important site for media reform over the past decade. Examining two South American countries in particular, Argentina and Venezuela, it is possible to see that media reforms have aimed at redistributing media power to a much wider range of civil society actors. The key strategy that brought major support for the reforms in the case of Argentina was the joining of forces of a large number of groups to form the Coalition for Democratic Radio Broadcasting. Leading a wide range of debates and distributing throughout Argentine society, the Coalition’s 21 action points for media reform, presented to the government for the first time in 2004, were incorporated into legislation in 2009. The most significant components of these reforms have been the Coalition’s call for citizen involvement in media as fundamental to media democracy and demands for the redistribution of media power, dividing up the media spectrum in thirds, among government, corporate media, and community media. Secondly, the chapter considers the strategies associated with the development of alternative and community communication in line with reforms aimed at the construction of a participatory, democratic project and, the diversification of the traditional accumulation of power in Venezuela.

The Mexican Association for the Right to Information (AMEDI), the most prominent media reform group in the country, has for the last decade conducted a permanent campaign for the democratization of media in Mexico. During this time AMEDI has developed a number of effective strategies, which include: constant advocacy, by organizing conferences and symposiums, providing relevant information through their internet page and public communiques and cementing an eclectic but unified front against media power; permanent monitoring, by identifying in National Congress all MPs with close personal or professional connections to big media and evaluating the performance of media regulators and key civil servants; strategic litigation, by fighting in court commercial transactions carried out by media corporations which could further entrench media concentration and contesting in the Supreme Court of Justice the constitutionality of particular pieces of legislation; and research and policy-making exercises, by publishing academic books and drafting media law to be submitted for legislative consideration. Alongside an advantageous political environment and the pressure asserted by a dynamic student movement, these strategies have been responsible for the 2013 Telecommunication Reforms and the transformation of the legal framework regulating media in Mexico.

As a leading media reform promotion organization in West Africa, the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) initiated its advocacy work on major issues of reform through the following key strategies: Research and documentation of the issues at stake; the clear definition of objectives; the clear identification of primary, secondary and vicarious beneficiaries of the projected reforms; the definition and identification of target authorities, institutions or agencies to address, and a political profile of the perspectives and attitudes of key influential officials thereof; consultation with key stakeholders—publishers, journalists/media professional associations, interested human rights groups; the mobilization of the stakeholders into activist committees or coalitions; the collective definition of key activities to engage in, and drawing of a plan or programme of active intervention; the detailed plans for specific interventions or activities such as: media actions (press statements, briefings and conferences; dissemination of position papers or situation analysis, memoranda, petitions, etc.); public hearings; public lectures; presentations to communities, groups and institutions; court litigation; protests and demonstrations; constant monitoring and evaluation of programmes, activities, and interventions; and the continual sharing and communication of outcomes and challenges with the public and members of the advocacy constituency.

This chapter argues that the 2008 global economic crisis and the economic restructuring that followed have accelerated state-led digitization, corporation, and capital accumulation within the state media system. After contextualizing media reforms as part of the state’s cultural-system reform program, the chapter examines the case of digital TV, tracing the bumpy process of using convergence as a cover to corporatize cable networks and content production while revealing the leading role of state-owned digital media companies exemplified by Shanghai Media Group and Zhejiang Wasu in this process. It also underscores the inherent contradictions of the corporate digital-TV enterprise, especially demand deficiency resulting from systematic socioeconomic inequality and the contingency of public service left to the discretion of state companies that manage digital TV.

This chapter examines the relevance of localism to the mass media sector in the U.S. It explores the history of media-reform movements and the emergence of alternative and community media as one strategy for opposing corporate control of the media. It discusses the negative coverage of localism in the American media and evaluates claims about the grassroots and democratic potential of Internet-based media. This chapter also considers the problem of consolidation for for-profit alternative media and the potentials and pitfalls of nonprofit ownership as a strategy of survival.

The Egyptian Radio and Television Union (ERTU) functions as a state broadcaster under the strict supervision of the Ministry of Information. To transform ERTU into a public broadcaster, Egypt should first abolish its Ministry of Information. ERTU’s Board of Trustees needs to be restructured to include reputed professionals with a vision to transform ERTU into a public broadcaster. The Board should abolish the current ERTU Charter and Code of Ethics and establish new ones. ERTU needs to operate with the interests of the public rather than the regime in mind. The new Charter should guarantee ERTU independence and establish criteria whereby ERTU should focus on non-commercial political, social, and cultural content that caters to all sectors of society. The new Charter should abolish the designation of ERTU as the sole broadcaster in the country and allow for the establishment of private terrestrial channels. ERTU should become financially independent from the state, with the public providing funding through subscriptions or taxes. The number of channels operated by ERTU should be decreased to one or two, and the staff provided with training and an efficient media strategy to follow. Research should be constantly utilized to study audiences and viewership habits.

Chapter 1 historicizes the journalism crisis, showing that in the United States commercial news media institutions have always been in crisis. The chapter first summarizes the history of the US press and its freedoms under the First Amendment of the US Constitution and sketches out continuities in US press history in terms of democratic theory, market failure, and reform efforts. It goes on to outline a long unbroken tradition of radical media criticism and ongoing attempts to rein in the commercial excesses of US journalism. Finally, the chapter underscores the US press system’s structural contradictions that have rendered it prone to crisis.

The emergence of journalism as a profession in the Arab region dates back to the nineteenth century with the establishment of newspapers and presses in Iraq, Egypt, and Syria under Ottoman rule. Since the colonial powers did not encourage freedom of expression, Arab journalism developed unique characteristics, with journalists negotiating their roles by circumventing or accepting censorship and authoritarianism. This chapter explores the evolution of Arab journalism from its infancy during the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the changing media politics of the twentieth century. It examines the role of different technological innovations, such as satellite television and the internet, and how they impacted the media environment and development of Arab journalism.

The book’s concluding chapter discusses post-revolutionary developments in Tunisia’s digital spaces of contention as the country attempted to build a democratic system. It explores the mutations and adaptations the voices of contention have undergone since the revolution and reflects on their significance. More specifically, it looks at the extent to which those who played a role in digital contention prior to the revolution effected and were affected by the changes the country witnessed since 2011 and asks whether they lost their relevance or became embedded; whether they were marginalized or developed the ability to shape the emergent media systems and enhance democratic engagement.

This chapter contends that a corporate libertarian vision of media policy established the discursive terrain in which conservative media thrived in the United States after World War II. The corporate libertarian approach conceives of news media as a commodity—as opposed to a public resource—best left under private control and ownership. This vision became a hegemonic common sense that came to dominate US media policy discourses beginning in the late 1940s—thanks in part to a propagandistic influence campaign executed by corporate interests. This led to insufficient resources invested in a democratic news system. Such a policy orientation created conditions for a commercial media system driven by a competition to meet consumer demand. It also created a space for right-wing media activists to mobilize and cultivate conservative publics through outlets propped up by patronage networks and ideologically motivated venture capital.