The dramatic transformation of media landscapes in post-communist countries has attracted a fair share of scholarly attention, and the general patterns of change—ranging from the introduction of commercial media and the initial relaxation of state control to technological changes and the intensification of political and ownership pressures in recent years—are by now well known. This is not to say that these patters have been uniform across the region, or that scholars agree on how to interpret them. Indeed, as Peter Rollberg and Marlene Laruelle rightly point out in the introduction to their edited collection, media in post-communist societies “present a moving target, influenced by complex geopolitical and cultural factors,” which “make it hard, if not impossible, to arrive at a lasting analytical consensus” (8). Rather than seeking to establish an analytical consensus, or to develop an overarching argument about major trends in the region, this collection offers a set of loosely connected but insightful snapshots drawn from across the post-Soviet media landscape.

As one might expect, a significant portion of the book—five out of seventeen contributions—focuses on Russia. Yet this is balanced by a range of in-depth studies examining other post-Soviet countries that less often feature in English language publications: Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, and Tajikistan. Despite the mention of “mass media” in the title, the collection ranges well beyond traditional print and electronic media, and considers the wider “informational environment,” including digital media, and covering both information and entertainment genres. The contributions are divided into three sections. The first section, entitled “National Trends,” opens with a thought-provoking critical assessment of international media freedom rankings, focusing on rankings provided by Freedom House, Reporters without Borders, and the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX). While commending the rankings for their reliability, the authors (Tudor Vlad, Lee B. Becker, and Jack Snyder) raise fundamental concerns about their validity and highlight the rather dated and one-sided conceptualization of freedom they rely on. Echoing earlier criticisms of media freedom rankings, the authors call for more robust empirical testing of the link between free media and democratization—not least in light of the fact that a sudden increase in media freedom may well be hijacked by populist leaders championing illiberal values. This is followed by two contributions (Maria Lipman, Jonathan Becker) that focus on Russian media but use this as a basis for tackling the wider issue of continuities and discontinuities between Soviet and post-Soviet media. Becker argues that the current Russian media landscape has more in common with its counterparts in other (neo-)authoritarian countries than it does with the Soviet media system, and offers a useful analysis of key differences between the two. The remaining chapters are more narrowly focused on developments in individual countries. Marta Dyczok examines changes in Ukraine's media from the point of view of global cultural convergence, Oleg Manaev studies media in Belarus as an example of a “hybrid regime” or “competitive autocracy,” Barbara Junisbai, Azamat Junisbai, and Nicola Ying Fry provide a useful comparative study of media consumption in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and Kornely Kakachia, Tamara Pataraia, and Michael Cecire examine the role of social media in Georgian party politics.

The second section of the book focuses on television—a medium widely agreed to hold the dominant position in post-soviet countries despite the growing influence of social media. The section approaches television from a refreshingly wide set of perspectives, covering issues of censorship and self-censorship among Russian media personalities and exporters (Elisabeth Schimpfossl and Ilya Yablokov); the role of Russia's cultural TV channel Rossiya-K in Russian nation building (Marlene Laruelle); the ideological messages promoted through the Russian mini-series Peter the First: The Testament (2011) (Peter Rollberg); as well as the role of historical documentaries and serial fiction as means of national identity building in Kazakhstan (one chapter each by Laruelle). The third section of the book shifts attention to social media. Sarah Oates draws an insightful comparison between media and political developments during the late Soviet period, and the role of social media in the “acceleration” of dissent during the 2011–12 Russian protests; Luca Anceschi examines the persistence of political control over digital media in Kazakhstan, focusing on the wave of repression directed at Kazakstan bloggers in 2014; Abdulfattor Shafiev and Marintha Miles discuss changes in Tajik authorities’ Internet censorship policy 2010–14; and Olena Nikolayenko analyzes youth media consumption and perceptions of electoral integrity in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The section concludes with a journalist's perspective on social media and their role in public debate in Central Asia by Navbaroh Imamova.

This collection brings an important addition to existing literature on media in post-Soviet countries, especially because of its unusually wide geographical scope and its broad coverage that encompasses both policy developments and audience use, and ranges from news to documentary and fictions. That said, the collection also reflects some of the persistent weaknesses in the field of research on post-communist media. One of them is the continued reliance on the long-outdated “four theories of the press” (Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm, 1963) as a basis for conceptualizing differences and similarities between authoritarian and democratic media. While the comparative study of media systems in the west has long abandoned their typology in favor of more nuanced alternatives (see Hallin and Mancini, 2004), scholars of post-communist media have yet to agree on a similarly nuanced typology of media systems in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian societies. Another weakness of the field lies in the undertheorized link between media systems and what I have elsewhere called media cultures (Mihelj and Huxtable, 2018). While Rollberg and Laruelle's collection adopts a much needed double focus that considers both political and cultural elements of media landscapes, the links between the two remain unclear. These are, of course, issues that one cannot expect to be resolved in an edited collection, and Rollberg and Laruelle's collection contains several useful pointers and empirical case studies then can help push the debate in the field in the right direction.