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This paper contributes to the debate on evolving uncertainty and crisis in the European mediascape. While in many countries economic factors are often blamed for dramatic modifications of media operations, this chapter follows a different approach. It suggests the adjustment of European media to shifting contextual (economic, technological) conditions is also affected by mounting societal changes and transformations, amongst which the individualization of consumption is the dominating one. The paper argues that audience interests and growing personalized access opportunities to information reinforce media fragmentation, which, furthermore, leads to audience segmentation and increasing political and social polarization within and across various nations in Europe. Individualized information consumption appears to be critical for European democracy since it affects the cohesion of society. By diverting public attention away from shared and communal dialogues to private interests and soft issues in the media it challenges the notion of good community. By reducing civic involvements it intensifies public anxieties and increases uncertainty, skepticism and distrust. As argued, younger Central and Eastern European democracies appear to be more seriously affected by these societal changes, as well as by their outcomes and effects, than Western European societies where long-lasting democratic practices and traditions have secured certain conditions and mechanisms for healthier performance of their media and public engagement in communal matters. The chapter makes the suggestion that contemporary societal developments call for the …