“Relation“ is the title of the first European newspaper, published in 1605 in Strasbourg. Such a tradition obliges. Founded in 1994, the new “Relation” will be concerned particularly with issues regarding the multifaceted relationships between media and society in temporal and spatial comparative perspectives. The new subheading “Perspectives on Comparative Communication Research” clearly expresses this programme. There is widespread consensus that social media such as Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube are changing political communication. However, no such consensus exists when it comes to assessing the effects the emergence of social network services, blogging environments, and online discussion forums have on democracy. The new volume of the book series ‘Relation’ wants to shed light on the changes of political processes caused by media transformations. Beneath an introduction (T. Eberwein, C. Wenzel, W. Schulz) this volume offers contributions in German and English concerning the role of social media in public communication (H.-B. Brosius, M. Haim, M. Schenk, J. Niemann-Lenz, A. Briehl, M. König, W. König), social media, journalism, and news organizations (M. Prinzing, S. Weis, J. Wilke, C. Wenzel, S. Sparviero, J. Trappel), social media and political participation (F. Saurwein, N. Just, M. Latzer, S. Metreveli, B. Schneider, Ch. Buschow, K. Sarikakis, B. Wessels), democratic qualities of social media (R. Parrilla Guix, S. Gadringer, J. Trappel, L. Zaghlami, H. Rau), and social media and media policy (A. Schejter, N. Tirosh, D. Arnold).