Media Policy in Belgium: How a Complex Institutional System Deals with Technological Developments

Abstract

Belgium is a complex country where people with different cultures and languages live together. Not surprisingly, the country’s media landscape and media policy are the products of its recent history and evolution from a unitary state towards a multi-level federal state, which began in the 1970s. Now political power is divided between the federal level, the language-based communities (i.e. the Flemish Community, the French Community,and the German-Speaking Community) and the territory-based regions (i.e. the Flemish Region, the Walloon Region, and the Brussels-Capital Region). In the field of audiovisual media, the chief responsibility for policy formulation belongs to the communities.