Javnost - The Public, Vol. 28 - 2021, No. 1
In Memoriam: Jay G. Blumler (18 February 1924–30 January 2021)
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After the Crisis A “New Normal” for Democratic Citizenship?
The global pandemic and consequent economic tumult have strained conventional theoretical accounts of what it means to be a citizen. The notion of a “new normal” has been widely adopted to describe the potential historical reframing that the pandemic has engendered. Drawing on previous theoretical accounts of crises and their ramifications, this article explores how the communicative features of democratic citizenship might be imagined and practised differently in the aftermath of the pandemic. It considers the spatial and ontological recasting of the idea of the civic public that has been precipitated by the present global crisis. The article calls for the elaboration of a language of public discourse by which people can develop new forms of communicative agency, enabling them to respond to urgent contingencies; negotiate tensions between historical possibilities; and cultivate emergent futures.
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Politics vs. Antipolitics in the Mediatised Public Sphere: Traversing the Contested Boundary between the Civic and the Political in Bulgaria
The global pandemic and consequent economic tumult have strained conventional theoretical accounts of what it means to be a citizen. The notion of a “new normal” has been widely adopted to describe the potential historical reframing that the pandemic has engendered. Drawing on previous theoretical accounts of crises and their ramifications, this article explores how the communicative features of democratic citizenship might be imagined and practised differently in the aftermath of the pandemic. It considers the spatial and ontological recasting of the idea of the civic public that has been precipitated by the present global crisis. The article calls for the elaboration of a language of public discourse by which people can develop new forms of communicative agency, enabling them to respond to urgent contingencies; negotiate tensions between historical possibilities; and cultivate emergent futures.
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Public Sphere in Hybrid Media Systems in Central and Eastern Europe
The article explores the concept of hybridity in relation to political and media-related change and its implications for the contemporary public sphere in Central and Eastern Europe. Two key approaches to hybridity are contrasted and examined to this end: the well-established concept of the hybrid media system, defined in terms of a combination of older and newer media logics in platform societies in the times of late modernity, is contrasted with the concept of hybridity in political and media systems in relation to unsuccessful regime change and democratization or recent illiberal backsliding. Hybridity as the outcome of longue durée contextual conditions, as well as the more recent mediatization, is present also in the contemporary public spheres in CEE countries in relation to specific conditions and contingencies of individual mediascapes.
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The Public Sphere and the Changing News Media Environment in Poland: Towards Structural Polarisation
This paper explores current result of gradual structural changes affecting news media environment in Poland. Its main argument is that these developments have led to a growing structural polarisation. Such polarisation penetrates news media coverage, journalistic community setup and self-regulatory frameworks, users’ perspectives and various news media spaces, including mainstream media and digital natives. The gaps grow between societal camps with liberal and conservative orientations, young and old, urban and non-urban communities, well and poorly educated.
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Crisis of Agency in Central and Eastern Europe: From the Consolidation of Media Freedom to the Institutionalisation of Free Choice
This paper explores current result of gradual structural changes affecting news media environment in Poland. Its main argument is that these developments have led to a growing structural polarisation. Such polarisation penetrates news media coverage, journalistic community setup and self-regulatory frameworks, users’ perspectives and various news media spaces, including mainstream media and digital natives. The gaps grow between societal camps with liberal and conservative orientations, young and old, urban and non-urban communities, well and poorly educated.
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“Nobody Tells us what to Write about”: The Disinformation Media Ecosystem and its Consumers in the Czech Republic
The rise of digital platforms has provided an opportunity for an unprecedented expansion of the public sphere; however, the recent proliferation of online disinformation, automated propaganda as well as hate speech has substantially hampered their potential to become an instrument for more egalitarian and participatory communication in a democratic society. In many countries, the ascent of right-wing populism in recent years has been associated with the establishing of an alternative information environment that includes a variety of fringe news websites that frequently engage in spreading rumours, hoaxes and conspiracy theories. Attempting to fill the gap in the scholarship that predominantly tends to focus on the US and Western European political and media context, this article aims to map the disinformation ecosystem and its audiences in the Czech Republic, a country where the online disinformation scene has been particularly active in recent years. Following an outline of the evolution of the Czech media system over the course of the last three decades, this study utilises data from the 2018–2020 Digital News Report surveys to provide empirical insights into the characteristics of the consumers of the most prominent disinformation news websites in the Czech Republic. In conclusions, the paper evaluates the challenges these new patterns of (dis)information consumption pose for the post-transition public sphere in the Czech Republic, especially in context of the processes of democratic deconsolidation and the rise of illiberalism.
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