Screening Socialism

The Television Revolution
The Screening Socialism Project

Screening Socialism was a three-year project (2013-2016) funded by the Leverhulme Trust, which  developed the first comparative, transnational study of television under communist rule. It used a combination of archival documents, programme and schedule analysis and oral history interviews in order to investigate the role of television in everyday life, the changing messages it disseminated to the public, the elite’s shifting relationship to the medium, as well as the part it has played in forming public memory of the socialist period. Particular attention was dedicated to the involvement of television in shaping the perceptions and practices of private and public life, as well as the engagement with the passage of time. The research conducted for the project also served as a basis for developing a novel theoretical and analytical framework for comparative media research, which shifts attention from media systems to media cultures. 

For concise summaries of some of the findings, please follow the links to "TV Histories" and "TV Cultures". The publications arising from the project are accessible under the "Publications" link. The project is now finished and the content is no longer updated, but please contact Sabina Mihelj (S.Mihelj@lboro.ac.uk) if you have any queries. 

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