Communication Policies and the Protection of Pluralism in the European Union and the United States

This article describes and analyses the regulatory frameworks and the current pluralism protection policies in the United States and several countries of the European Union (Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain). The data obtained allowed a qualitative assessment to be carried out, through a comparative analysis, in order to identify certain similarities and some significant differences. Thus, it was found that pluralism protection is a common denominator in the communication policies of these countries. However, regulatory and legislative differences depend on social, geographical and media contexts, and time variations in the application of policies depend on audiovisual media market liberalisation processes.