New Media, Old Regimes

Case Studies in Comparative Communication Law and Policy

By (author) Lyombe S. Eko

Publication date:

30 July 2012

Length of book:

492 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739167892

New Media, Old Regimes: Case Studies in Comparative Communication Law and Policy, by Lyombe S. Eko, is a collection of novel theoretical perspectives and case studies which illustrate how different communication law regimes conceptualize and apply universal ideals of human rights and freedom of expression to media controversies in real space and cyberspace. Eko’s investigation includes such controversial communication policy topics as North African regimes’ failed use of telecommunications to suppress the social change of the Arab Spring, the Mohammad cartoon controversy in Denmark and France, French and American policy of development and diffusion of the Minitel and the Internet, American and Russian regulation of internet surveillance, the problem of managing pedopornography in cyberspace and real space, and other current communication policy cases.

This study will aid readers not only to understand different national and cultural perspectives of thorny communication issues, but also show that though freedom of expression is a pluralistic concept, the actions of all political regimes at the national, transnational, and international levels must be held up to the universal standards of freedom of expression set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. New Media, Old Regimes provides essential scholarship on comparative communication law and policy in a world of new media.

Chapter 1. Mapping the Terrain of Comparative Communication Law
Part 1. Theoretical Approaches
Chapter 2. Systemic Approaches to Comparative Communication Law and Policy: Regulatory Regimes and Policy Transfer
Chapter 3. Politico-Cultural Approaches to Comparative Communication Law and Policy: Exceptionalism, Mentalities, and Asymmetries
Chapter 4. The European Supranational Communication Law and Policy Regime
Chapter 5. Multilateral Resolution of Communication Problems: The International Communications Regulatory Regime
Part 2. Comparative Case Studies in International Communication Law and Policy
Chapter 6. New Media, Old Authoritarian Regimes: Instrumentalization of the Internet and Networked Social Media in the "Arab Spring" of 2011 in North Africa
Chapter 7. Old Religions, Old Mentalities: The Mohammad Cartoons Affair as a Clash of Religious "Establishmentalities"
Chapter 8. New Technologies, Old Mentalities: The Internet, the Minitel, and Exceptionalist Information and Communication Technology Policy
Chapter 9. New Technologies, Old Big Brother: Internet Surveillance and "Governmentality" in the United States and the Russian Federation
Chapter 10. American Exceptionalism, the French Exception, and Harmonization of Intellectual Property Law by the United States and France
Chapter 11. New Media Old Images: Re-presentation of the Problem of Online Child Pornography Under International, European, and American Law
Chapter 12. New Realities, Old Ideologies: Communication Policy Transfers and "Developmentality" in Africa
Chapter 13. New Media, Ancient Animosities: "Propaganda of the Deed" and the Laws of War in the NATO/Yugoslav War of 1999
Epilogue

New Media, Old Regimes is one of the most interesting and innovative studies of comparative communications law available. Eko's use of a case-study approach to reveal the tensions between different political and cultural systems and their differing concepts of freedom of expression is extremely effective and enlightening.