Terekhova T. International Legal Regulation for Media Activities within the European Information Space.

This thesis is dedicated to the complex study of international legal regulation for the media activities, the establishment of specifics and the characterization of the normative and legal framework for media activities within the European information space, as well as the entry of Ukraine into the European information space. The theoretical and legal approaches to the media activities regulation within the European information space are considered, the legal mechanism for regulation of media activities within the European information space is analyzed. The author studies the institutional foundations of international cooperation towards legal support for media activities in the framework of international governmental and non-governmental organizations, as well as the issue of approximation of Ukrainian legislation to the European standards in the field of media activities regulation. The evolution of the European information space legal regulation has been analyzed and four basic stages have been identified, that allowed to establish the following main vectors of the European information policy development at the present stage: the development of audiovisual media; the convergence of telecommunications and media; the development of a new media. The causal link between the evolution of the European information space legal regulation and the versatility of Europe’s geopolitical development vectors are formulated as follows: the integration processes development and the simultaneous efforts to preserve national approaches (national identity) to legal regulation of media. The soft international legal standards of media activities were considered as a consensus omnium and it was stated that in this case the standard should be applied due to its reasonableness and practical value. Based on interdisciplinary approach to modern media trends research by using the sociological, the ecological, the legal and the economic sciences tools, author formulate her own definition for “media ecosystem” as a self-organized non-homogeneous information and communication community based on information technologies aimed at maximum social integration of people. It was also defined the following media ecosystem key characteristics: distribution (heterogeneity of subjects and participants); available (due to technical progress, journalist function can be performed by any person); socio-technical orientation (due to technical advantages of such a system, all sectors of the population are involved); the ability to self-organize on the basis of the natural ecosystem principles (lack for system legal regulation does not stop its development), which in turn allows, without legal instruments, to properly regulate competition and cooperation between actors and participants in such a system. In this context, it was stated that non-governmental organizations perform self-regulation and self-control functions within the framework of media ecosystems, and states will sooner or later be forced to recognize self-regulation mechanisms as complementary to legislative, judicial and / or administrative ones. The practical value of the work is that the theoretical provisions, the results and conclusions formulated in the thesis can be used in research, educational and law-making activities. In the field of research, the thesis provisions update the existing research concerning international legal regulation of media activities and make it possible to determine the regularities of the legal regulation development within the European information space. Some points can be used as a basis for further research on the international legal standards for media activity. In addition, a few of thesis proposals on improvement of national legislation of Ukraine in the field of media activities can be used in law-making activities.