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F Foreword
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This volume is the product of a major programme under the title Changing Media –
Changing Europe supported by the European Science Foundation (ESF). The ESF is the
European association of national organisations responsible for the support of scientific
research. Established in 1974, the Foundation currently has seventy-six Member
Organisations (research councils, academies and other national scientific institutions)
from twenty-nine countries. This programme is the first to be sponsored by both the
Social Sciences and the Humanities Standing Committees of the ESF, and this unique
cross-disciplinary organization reflects the very broad and central concerns which have
shaped the Programme’s work. As co-chairpersons of the Programme it has been our
great delight to bring together many of the very best scholars from across the continent,
but also across the disciplinary divides which so often fragment our work, to enable
stimulating, innovative, and profoundly important debates addressed to understanding
some of the most fundamental and critical aspects of contemporary social and cultural
life.

The study of the media in Europe forces us to try to understand the major institutions
which foster understanding and participation in modern societies. At the same time we
have to recognize that these societies themselves are undergoing vital changes, as
political associations and alliances, demographic structures, the worlds of work, leisure,
domestic life, mobility, education, politics and communications themselves are all
undergoing important transformations. Part of that understanding, of course, requires
us not to be too readily seduced by the magnitude and brilliance of technological
changes into assuming that social changes must comprehensively follow. A study of the
changing media in Europe, therefore, is indeed a study of changing Europe. Research on
media is closely linked to questions of economic and technological growth and
expansion, but also to questions of public policy and the state, and more broadly to
social, economic and cultural issues.

To investigate these very large debates the Programme is organised around four key
questions. The first deals with the tension between citizenship and consumerism, that is
the relation between media, the public sphere and the market; the challenges facing the Foreword

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