Dr Katrin Voltmer is Senior Lecturer in Political Communication at the Institute of Communications Studies (ICS), University of Leeds. Her research interests focus on the role of the media in emerging democracies in a comparative perspective. She has also widely published on the changing relationship between politics and the media in established western democracies, the interplay between the media and public policymaking and media influences on citizens’ political orientations. Her most recent book on ‘The Media in Transitional Democracies’ has been published by Polity Press (2013). Other books include ‘Political Communication in Postmodern Democracy. Challenging the Primacy of Politics’ (ed. with Kees Brants), Palgrave 2011 and ‘Public Policy and Mass Media. The Interplay of Mass Communication and Political Decision Making’ (ed. with Sigrid Koch-Baumgarten), Routledge 2010. Katrin Voltmer has been awarded research grants from the ESRC and the British Academy. She currently leads an EU-funded FP7-project on ‘Media, Conflict and Democratisation’. She is Associate Editor of Communications-The European Journal of Communication Research and member of the Editorial Board of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford. She has been Chair of the Political Communication Section of ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Association); since 2012 she is member of the ECREA Bureau and Treasurer.