Javnost - The Public, Vol. 23 - 2016, No. 3
The Genealogy of Deritualising the Effects of Ideology in the Public Sphere
This article relies on the presupposition that ideology is a phenomenon which occurs in the same historical, developmental, social and structural field as the public sphere. Burdened by the stigmatised meaning of false consciousness, ideology was often “banished” from the field of the critical, rational public sphere, which was supposed to provide more space for the neutralisation of asymmetrical and hierarchical forms of power. The article is an attempt to additionally “colonise” the thematic field of the civil society with the concept of ideology, which is understood as a form of communicative practice having powerful deritualising effects. We investigate the ideological mechanism and effects of the deritualisation of communication and conclude that the mobilising and socially reconstructive discourse of ideology has not succeeded in building authentic and autonomous fields of validity such as science, art or ethics. Despite the “empirical deficits” which have been valid for ideology since its historical genesis until today, it is manifested as one of the regimes of discourse whose mechanisms reproduce many meanings and representations of social reality as regulated systems of discourse and practice in the public sphere of society.
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Hiding Hedonism in Plain Sight: Acoustic Participatory Camouflage at the DDR Museum in Berlin
This article illustrates the process of acoustic participatory camouflage associated with the organisation of exhibits and space within a place of memory. The DDR Museum is a place of memory that exhibits memorabilia and artefacts of the former state of East Germany, comprised of two sections that structure sense-making about the socialist state. An ethnographic content analysis of photographs and notes taken during two visits to the museum demonstrate that many of the texts and materials portray former East German citizens as hedonistic and juvenile. In addition, the exhibits invite visitors to engage in actions that simultaneously disguise and reinforce negative connotations associated with those portrayals. Ultimately, the museum builds public memory about the average East German citizen as a hedonistic juvenile dupe manipulated by external Soviet forces. Such a public memory plays a role in shaping the experiential cityscape of Berlin for former citizens and tourists alike.
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Historical Institutionalist Approach in Comparative Media Systems Research: The Case of Post-Yugoslavia
This article aims to demonstrate the usefulness of the historical institutionalist approach for the comparative study of media systems in post-socialist European democracies. The article explores institutional circumstances influencing the development of media systems in Southeastern Europe during three distinct historical periods following formative critical junctures; namely, the nineteenth-century modernisation period, the post-World War II socialist period and the period of post-1989 democratic transformation. In this pilot study a set of institutional dimensions is operationalised with aggregate data and comparatively tested in a cluster analysis of six successor states of socialist Yugoslavia. Two clusters are shown with similar historical conditions—Slovenia and Croatia group into one cluster, while Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia group in the other.
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The Circumstantial Media Activist: An Analysis of the Relation between Media and Political Representation
Alternative or radical media are kinds of media production common among social movements whose members do not see their causes represented in mainstream media. This is the case of the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST), which since 1984 has created media outlets and produced content for different platforms, later becoming active in the area of media and communication rights in Brazil. Based on fieldwork carried out in 2013 and 2014, this article proposes that a perspective of communication rights is attentive to the structural configuration of the media landscape and not only to the provision of technology and production skills. This study shows that collective action and promotion of structural change are still relevant alongside new technologies.
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“I don’t Wear Blinkers, All Right?” The Multiple Meanings of Civic Identity in the Indignados and the Role of Social Media
The global upsurge in collective action has highlighted the extensive use of social media by social movements. Yet the extent to which citizenship is enacted and potentially transformed by social media use within these movements remains under-explored. This study employs a cross-country comparative analysis of the relationship between social media, movement mobilisation and civic membership within the Indignados movement in Greece and France. Through interviews with Indignados members and content analysis of activist discourses in the movement’s Facebook groups, we critically evaluate the potential of social media in (re)defining the meaning and practice of civic membership. The study reveals that civic membership plays a significant role in activist self-identification because the “citizen” category unites subjects despite differences in their political identities. However, social media’s role in the construction of civic and collective identities is highly ambivalent. While on Facebook different subjectivities are brought together under a shared civic identity, in specific Facebook groups users re-enact their partial (nationalistic) identities, creating digital enclaves that host a distinct “we” within the broader Indignados movement. These findings problematise the notion that Facebook has an intrinsic capacity to facilitate online communities which transcend given boundaries; social media can equally sustain existing boundaries of exclusion.
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Dimensions of Journalistic Workplace Autonomy: A Five-nation Comparison
This article examines how journalists perceive workplace autonomy in five European countries, based on an email survey (N = 2238) conducted in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Estonia. The article argues that the workplace level functions as a link between the macro level of external pressures and the micro level of perceived influences on news work. Using principal component analysis we explore the dimensionality of workplace autonomy based on a set of 20 survey questions. Regression analysis is then used on the dimensions found in order to determine what affects perception of autonomy in the different dimensions. The most salient explanatory variables are found on the country and organisational levels, whereas the variables age, experience, gender, managerial role and medium have no or limited effects. The results show the organisational and country levels being integrated and that national journalistic culture is the most salient factor explaining perception of autonomy.
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Reconciling the Economic Sustainability of Radio Broadcasters in Slovenia with Pluralism and Diversity
The generous licensing policy for terrestrial radio in Slovenia led to an overcrowded market with limited geographical coverage, creating a situation whereby the advertising revenues of a large number of operators were insufficient for them to break even. Small regional broadcasting operators are not only economically inefficient since they cannot exploit economies of scale, but also do not fulfil the social goal of media policy in terms of pluralism and diversity. Therefore, consolidation through mergers and networking could improve their economic viability, while the social goals of media policy could be achieved by other means, such as a public interest test and the co-existence of public broadcasters and radio stations of a community type whose economic survival would be supported by public and other non-profit funds. Such a media policy would require a relaxation of the ownership rules and strengthening of the role of regulation and regulatory institutions which should monitor the fulfilment of economic, social and public policy goals.
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