Slovene Suplement, Vol. 15 - 2008, Suplement
The role of the Slovenian newpapers in the processes of unification and separation of the Slovenian public from 1797 to 1945
The article describes the role of the Slovenian newspapers in the processes of unification and division of the Slovenian public. Author exposes a critical view on the levels of the uniting and dividing practices. Practically all programmes of the Slovene social movements in history considered the question of nationality; they strongly diverged in terms of political goals and ideologies. Until the press evolved, the differences of opinion were part of other social spheres – religious, nationalist etc. With the formation of the public and the emergence of political daily newspapers, the Slovenian public became divided into two camps: the Catholic and the secular/liberal. The divide concerned all spheres of public life and remained unchallenged until today. Despite multiple centuries of divisions and ideological arguments, the Slovenian national interest remained the quintessential value that upgraded all the ideological and political divisions.
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The Slovene magazine Tovariš (companion) and its magazine-companions in the second half of the twentieth century
After the Second World War in Slovenia the information age began. For the first time, the Slovenian press which has always developed within the European journalism frame, but always also lagged behind it, caught up with the European media. Many social and political changes influenced the development of the press in Slovenia during that period: firstly and most importantly, the appearance of socialism and self-management, and much later the fall of the Iron Curtain, the end of socialism and the transition to capitalism. Socialism spurred the occurrence of literary journalistic style in the magazine Tovariš. Since journalists could not have openly criticised the political system, they wrapped the criticism in stories about people who suffered injustice.
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From Vodnik’s “chatting with people” to the principle of the inverted pyramid: Stylistic considerations of the development of Slovenian journalistic genres
The article attempts to determine the beginnings of an independent journalistic style in the Slovene language by means of a textual-stylistic analysis of the news in Vodnik’s paper Lublanske novice (1797–1800) and first Slovenian daily newspaper Slovenski narod (1868–1945). Lublanske novice still lacked of a specialised language tools, which would provide evidence of the development of reporting as a specific linguistic subgenre. Thus Vodnik cannot be considered the founder of the journalistic style which was only formed during the last three decades of the 19th century, when a completely new function started to emerge in the language of daily newspapers. In that period stylistic particularities developed that led to the development of a specific journalistic discourse in reporting, most evidently in the news.
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Radio non-listening and/or disobedience: From agitprop to the programme council
The article focuses on the turning points in the history of the Slovenian radio after 1945 that went beyond the radio as a medium and were related to the broader social conditions in the period of a single-party rule, and to the attempts of the Yugoslav authorities to create a single Yugoslav nation and hence to limit radio broadcasts in the Slovene language. The national radio had a crucial role in the breakthrough of national television in the late 1950s, and significantly changed the media landscape with a light, personalized programming introduced in 1972 by its new channel, Val 202. In the late 1980s, the Slovenian radio was in the frontlines of the struggle for political democratization and national emancipation, fighting for democracy and for Slovenia, and, like always, ignoring any attempts to be silenced.
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Television in Slovenia prior to its official beginning
In 2008, the Slovenian public Radio and Television (RTV Slovenia) is celebrating the 50th anniversary of television, but television in Slovenia began long before 1958. In August 1956 the employees of Radio Ljubljana were already producing TV shows, but television began even earlier. In 1947 the Laboratory for Television was founded in Ljubljana with the aim to develop television equipment. In 1954, the Laboratory also presented a plan to start television broadcasting and organised the first public demonstration of television as a new medium. However, much earlier – in 1929 – baron Anton Codelli of Ljubljana succeeded to transmit mechanically an image at a distance. The multiplicity of “the firsts” clearly demands some cautiousness in defining “the beginnings.” The reconstruction of some phenomena from the early history of television in Slovenia also indicates the importance of the conception of technology as a use for contemporary media research. The medium as we know it is only a dominant use of media technology but not the only possible one. It prevailed gradually and not without complications which testify that the relationship between societies and technologies is not a simple cause-effect relation. Development of media technologies is not determined in advance, it depends on debates about the scope and form of social life that involve all members of society. The look into the past is thus also the guidance for the future. How the media of the future are going to be, depends on every one of us.
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How we obtained the Slovenian news program: 40 years of TV dnevnik news program (1968–2008)
Televizija Ljubljana (now Televizija Slovenija) has been broadcasting its daily news programme, TV dnevnik, since April 15, 1968. For almost thirty years, it had no real competitor in Slovenia. TV Dnevnik determined the daily routine of the majority of viewers. Today it is taken for granted that we have the news programme in our national language, but in 1968 the situation was different, and TV Slovenija achieved this “right” only after a decade-long struggle. In 1958, the Yugoslav television network was established as a result of joint efforts by Studio Ljubljana, Studio Zagreb and Studio Belgrade. Since then, the news programme broadcast across former Yugoslavia was produced by Studio Belgrade, whose privileged position could be partly explained by the most suitable working conditions, its proximity to federal institutions, the best connections with all Yugoslav republics and foreign countries, and above all, by the wish on the part of federal political bodies to control and influence programming content. The decision of Slovenian television to launch its own news programme represented a break with this policy, with other national televisions soon following suit. The article describes the birth of TV Dnevnik as reconstructed from internal documents of RTV Slovenia, press articles and other sources.
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Domestication of television in Slovenia: Private and public uses of television in a historical perspective
The article discusses the uses of television in Slovenia in the 1960s and 1970s, when television massively entered into people’s homes. Television played a significant role in political, economic and cultural transformations of the Slovenian society in the second half of the twentieth century. The author reconstructs the cultural history of television through the perspectives of its consumers – TV viewers, and investigates what people did with television, how they used it, domesticated it and, finally, how they appropriated television and identified with it. The analysis of uses of television and practises of watching television is focused on television as a technology (TV as a technical apparatus), a media institution (RTV Ljubljana), and a cultural text (TV program or TV contents). The author investigates the consequences of the introduction of television into the homes of thousands of viewers for the individuals and their private sphere as well as for the wider society. The analysis of the interviews about the uses of television reveals that television played a crucial role in the processes of urbanisation of the Slovenian society, in contesting socialism, in the formation of the Slovene national consciousness, in the reorganization of the household and family relations, and in the spread of the individualization and alienation processes.
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History of audience and programme research in RTV Ljubljana/RTV Slovenia
Radio and Television Ljubljana established the Department Programme Research (DPR) in 1970. In the first ten years of its activity, DPR carried out surveys of TV viewing and radio listening twice a year. Beside that it also carried out many other surveys to identify opinions of the audiences on radio and television programmes, about their life styles and about general social issues. During the 1980s, both television and radio audience research became less frequent. However, in the period from 1991 to 2006, the radio research unit of DPR carried out surveys and measurements of radio listening always on the same day of the year. Television research unit tried to find better solutions in the 1990s and started to cooperate with external research institutes, which ended in the use of telemetric data that have been available in Slovenia since 2000. In collaboration with university scholars, the research department at the national RTV also conducted some useful content analyses. Due to a thorough and systematic publication of the results, numerous data on audience and the development of radio and television programmes in Slovenia are preserved as a precious evidence of the time.
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The beginnings of the Internet in Slovenia
The article deals with the history of the Internet as a cluster of ideas, technical innovations, political contexts and social and cultural conditions. First, it discusses the history and ideas behind computer and network technologies and places them into cultural, political and economic frames. Next, the introduction of the Internet in Slovenia is placed in the context of the development of the European telecommunication system. The conditions that led to “the early Internet culture” are illustrated with statistical data about the spreading of computer technology and the scientific responses to the phenomenon itself. As it is argued by some eminent scientists, it was only through the collaboration in international projects, the persistence of certain people in the scientific circles and their numerous innovative ideas that the Internet in Slovenia was introduced in such a way at such an early time.
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