For France, however, media pluralism means more than just a competitive
media market; for broadcast media especially, it means a pluralism of distinctly
French media that upholds and delivers French linguistic and other politico-
cultural values to French citizens, in an increasingly competitive global media
marketplace dominated by American popular culture (Kuhn 2011; Eko 2013).
Though France has on occasion engaged in outright censorship – perhaps most
notably in the 1950s and early 1960s during the Algerian war of independence –
it has more typically directed policy and state resources to promoting preferred
content, through subsidies and content requirements, over outright censorship
of disfavored content. The French approach of promoting preferred content can
be seen in the political competition for inﬂuence over public broadcasting,
where such competition resulted in a changing series of regulators, the Haute
Autorité de la communication audiovisuelles (HACA),
the Commission
Social_Media_and_Democracy