Special issue: Young scholars' network of ECREA

Under the overarching theme of Transcultural Communication - Intercultural Comparisons, the 2010 European Communication Conference (ECC 2010) organised by the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) in Hamburg brought together more than 1,000 participants from a wide range of media and communication disciplines. Within 17 thematic sections, scholars from Europe and beyond presented their current research. Among them were many interesting presentations by young scholars. A selection of these papers is presented in this special issue of PLATFORM edited by the management team of the Young Scholars' Network of the European Communication Research and Education Association (YECREA).
This YECREA special issue of PLATFORM presents a collections of articles based on papers presented at the 2010 European Communication Conference (ECC 2010). The articles address the role of the media - traditional mass media, mainstream online (digital) media, and computer games - in contemporary society and can be divided into two main themes: (1) collective identity and identification; and (2) facilitating democratic involvement. From different theoretical and empirical points of view, the articles point to the interrelationships between the media, cultural identifications and democratic involvement. The articles explore the ways in which practices around the media, whether traditional mass media, mainstream online media or computer games, can come to influence and are influenced by cultural affinities and local contexts.