“The second International Conference on Communication and Media Studies: The challenges facing local and regional broadcasters regarding their access to online services” (ICCMS 2016) will take place from 15th – 16th December 2016 in Tirana, Albania. The conference intends to bring together leading researchers, academic scientists, and research scholars not only from Albania and Albanian speaking territories, more over from universities and research centers of different countries aiming to share and present their individual and group work experiences and research results related to the above theme in the field of Media and Communication.

Facing the new technological developments, loss of spatial and time borders, specific policies and strategies followed by different countries regarding the development of local and regional broadcasters, the importance of the latter is starting to feel more and more. At a time when the local information seems to have lost ground towards the informative flows of local, regional and global studies on the challenges faced by local broadcasters, the studies on these challenges faced by the local broadcasters require a greater commitment of researchers, in order to bring solutions and guidance on subjects and issues that concern this important media sector.

The conference will introduce topics dealing with the issue of content offered by the media, physical infrastructure and human resources, their compatibility with innovations enabled by Internet, discussions about freedom of the press, the status of the local journalist, relationships with internal and external stakeholders etc.

These and other issues have prompted the initiative for “The second International Conference on Communication and Media Studies: The challenges facing local and regional broadcasters regarding their access to online services.” (ICCMS 2016) in order to analyze the main challenges of the local and regional broadcasters in front of the difficulties they encounter nowadays due to the economic and management model, as well as the obstacles and competition born as a result of the technological developments, the use of internet and online broadcasting.