increased greatly. Geopolitics, technology, business developments and a more nuanced understanding of the interrelationships between these forces have all contributed to a resurgence in the fi eld. One might, of course, argue that all research is in essence comparative, even if comparisons are merely drawn unconsciously; an exercise that seeks to defi ne and focus on a singular entity can be said to be comparative (if by default) in its exclusion of other entities. This handbook is founded on the assumption that deliberate, conscious comparative research is necessary and has major benefi ts. As such, it tries to capture existing and new scholarship on the dynamics of media law and policy developments across technologies, societies and time in a way that transcends day- to-day changes in this fast- moving fi eld. The handbook begins from the premise that the laws and policies governing the media are deeply socially embedded, and represent the values, patterns and processes of control as they relate to mediation, freedom of expression and access to information. Media laws and policies are the result of forces—institutional, technical and cultural—acting toward a parti cular notion of social order. They are social artefacts embedding both technical and symbolic properties. 1 They signal a country or society’s commitment to democracy, they speak to a notion of identity and they are symbolically representative of social cohesion. Media laws and policies offer a window, too, onto globalization and its changing meaning over time. Any media law and policy handbook, therefore, requires an analytic framework that goes beyond the “letter of the law”—applying instead a more encompassing socio- legal and interdisciplinary methodology. It also requires adapting existing theories to new contexts, as well as the generation of new abstract models that can explain how and why certain rules and standards are promoted and advocated. Finally, it requires a comparative perspective: The values, patterns and processes associated with media laws and policies and the forces that perpetuate them often do not fully reveal themselves unless compared across societies or when confronted with new developments that question their validity and effectiveness.