 Dear students, now we are going to see the topic government regulation of the media. What is regulation? With regard to mass media, laws and guidelines that influence the way media companies produce, distribute or exhibit materials for audience are called regulations. So when we talk about the regulations of the media, there are different approaches. Those who compare media systems around the world describe four different approaches to government regulations of the media. These approaches describe the amount of control government should have over the media from high levels of control to low levels of control. So basically in these approaches, they talk about what kind of control government should have on the media. The first approach in this regard is the authoritarian approach. Authoritarian approach to media regulations are aimed at controlling what the population sees, reads and hears through the media outlet. These approaches are typically adopted by dictators who want to keep themselves and the elite class that support them in a direct control over society. So the authoritarian approach to control the media is basically then adopted when countries where there is a dictatorship, where there are monopolies, and where there is a lot of control of the state institutions. These approaches are followed by whatever is shown, according to the state policy, and whatever is the ruler of the state, it will be shown with the perspective of it. Authoritarian rules often claim that they are re-secuing their people from evils that the society may have experienced in the past. These authoritarian rulers believe that they are rescuing and many mis-apps have been ending them in the past, so the media should support them. They justify controlling the media and other aspects of life by saying that these activities are necessary in order to unify the public. They believe that if we don't do this, we can't unite the nation, we can't unite people, and that's why it is necessary to control the media and media should only show their perspective. Communist approaches to the government regulation believe that the government should determine what the population sees, reads, hears, and experiences through media outlets. They depart from authoritarian approaches, however, in the way they justify this control. So, in communist governments, they believe that media should carry the philosophy of communism and socialism, and they present only those news that are according to their ideologies and according to their beliefs. The third approach is a libertarian approach. Individuals are capable of making sound decisions of themselves, and that government should intervene only in those or clear circumstances where society cannot be served by people going about their own businesses. So, this libertarian approach, this is a liberal approach. In this, it is believed that the role of the government should be very limited in controlling the media, and the media should be controlled by the government, which are very important issues, and there should be an independent body for the control of the media, which should have a limited influence on media related matters. Social responsibility approaches. Supporters of social responsibility approaches believe that the real competition of ideas that libertarian seeks will never happen without government action to encourage companies to be socially responsible by offering a diversity of vices and ideas. So, it is a mixed kind or hybrid kind of approach in which they believe that media should be free, media should be independent, but media should be independent with some kind of social responsibility. And in order to ensure that responsibility, government should develop such kind of mechanism through which they can monitor the performance of the media organizations and media outlets.