ESSACHESS Vol 5, No 1(9), 2012

Historically, evaluations of media freedom and assessment of the role of media in the process of democratization have focused on print and broadcast media. More recently, researchers have brought the Internet into the equation. The Arab Spring in particular has suggested that social media might have a crucial role in informing and mobilizing audiences, especially in countries with limited press freedom.
This issue of ESSACHESS – Journal for Communication Studies has had the ambitious goal of investigating new trends in press freedom evaluation and in assessing the role of the press in the process of democratization in the context of the changes that the new media have brought to the field of mass communication.
ESSACHESS has brought together contributions from Freedom House, Reporters sans Frontieres and from International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX). The first two of these have the broadest range of countries studies. The Media Sustainability Index has expanded in recent years to cover a broader sweep of countries.