Media policy and regulation: activating voices, illuminating silences

In the midst of expectations and scepticism, media regulators are booming around the world. So-called independent regulators or statutory regulatory bodies have thrived with liberalization and privatization in the late 1980s and 1990s. Their configuration has been profoundly transformed ever since as technical convergence deepens and more actors expect to play an active role in the overall media regulatory construct. At subnational, national and transnational levels, the complexification of media self and coregulatory mechanisms is also notorious. Indeed, the distinctiveness of media regulators (and related agencies) is such that empirical reality is permanently challenging the tentative theorization of the scientific field.