"Media Compass: A Companion to International Media Landscapes serves as a guide that enables the mapping of media landscapes internationally through the help of a set of coordinates. It provides an overview of both robust, long-term media systems, and the fluctuating fashions and trends in media usage, discussing the key structural elements in the political, social, demographic, cultural, and economic set-up of media infrastructures and public communication. Media Compass assembles a collection of country portraits, not snapshots. Each of the contributions furnishes readers with a useful resource that can be consulted for a concise overview and assessment of a country's media environment, formative conditions and circumstances, historical background and development, current issues and challenges as well as its position in comparison to other countries. The entries allow for comparative readings of the conjunctions and divergences that characterise a country's place in the wider media landscape. For an general yet detailed account of today's media landscape, the book will include approximately 30 entries, with three to four portraits coming from each of the world's larger geopolitical regions, that is, Australia and the Pacific Regions, South and Southeast Asia, Central and Eastern Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East and North Africa, Eastern Europe and Russia, Western and Southern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North America. Media Compass therefore serves as a compendium which can be consulted individually and for the sake of comparison. In order to facilitate both types of use and enable quick navigation, all contributions follow the same basic structure"-- Provided by publisher.