Conceptions of time and space lie at the heart of many prevalent discourses on modernity and globalization. These conceptions are variably based on ideas of modern media of communication having developed as part of technological and other transformations throughout the modern era. One major aim of this essay is to scrutinize some of the literature that claims to establish historical links between modernity, globalization and the media. For one thing, it is asserted here that globalization is not simply a logical outcome of modernity. Depending on the chosen historical perspective, the relationship might be the contrary one - global interdependencies appearing prior to both early and late modernity. There is also a criticism of the spatialization turn in social and cultural theory. It does not capture the subtle dialectics of time and

space as these dimensions are reconstituted by the media, not least on the global level. In this context the author considers the critiques of media imperialism and postjournalism and their relevance for a grounded analysis of power and difference in a postcolonial, postcommunist global system.

This book presents a set of studies on the state of journalism in post-communist Russia. The picture of post-Soviet conditions contains structures inherited from the past and the clashes that necessarily occur in these structures between Western and traditional Soviet media practices and philosophies. Jan Ekecrantz reviews the, mostly Western, literature on media and post-communism. This introductory chapter also raises questions about the global context of post-communist transformation and the impact of Western media practices and images. Kerstin Olofsson analyses the perestroika and the developments in the ideological/political fields as they surfaced in the discussion in Russian magazines 1989-91, when censorship was abolished. Terhi Rantanen addresses a complex of related issues concerning the new markets in Russia. The equations seem hard to solve: the development of both global and private national markets of news and of centralistic state controls. Martin Hagström gives a picture of the tumultuous situation concerning media ownership in present-day Russia, along with a historical background staring in the glasnost years. Tamara Krekola focuses on the explosion of intermittent newspapers, pamphlets etc around 1990, when freedom of the press became a reality. Jukka Pietilänen studies the relationship between social change and changing journalism in the Karelian Republic. A series of in-depth interviews with journalists is the starting point for Anna Sosnovskaya’s study of the changing practices and changing contexts of Russian journalism.