engleski

The Role of New Media in the Democratization of Society in the Postsocialist Countries

The advent of digital interactive media in the 1990s has transformed not only the technological, cultural and economic spheres of contemporary society, but has also brought about significant changes in their political sphere. In developed democratic societies, new media have contributed to more democratic dissemination of information and the establishment of new modes of grassroots democracy. They have also opened up new channels of political intervention to minority groups and alternative culture initiatives. In the context of postsocialist countries, in which the 1990s were marked by programmatic efforts to establish Western-style democratic structures and procedures, approaches to democracy based on the potential of new media to effectuate political transformation have proved particularly ineffective. On the one hand, access to communications technology prerequisite to becoming a part of the political space made possible by the new media is more severely limited in these societies than is the case in the economically more developed countries. On the other hand, the democratic potential of new media was far easier to realize in the context of societies of reflexive modernization (Beck), where the processes of individualization began in the mid-1970s, grew significantly throughout the 1980s, and became the organizing principle in the 1990s. These societies also had developed civic initiatives, grassroots political movements, and democratic traditions lacking in the context of postsocialist countries. One of the major obstacles to effectuating political change in the context of postsocialist countries was, even more so than the underdeveloped technological structure, a general lack of receptivity to the modes of political communication made possible by new media. Socio-political space of those societies was structured by old media and traditional forms of political participation, often falling back to the 19th century models.

new media; postsocialism; democratization; political change

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