engleski

The Journalistic Field: News Media and the Rising Importance of Civil Society Media

In the analysis of the journalistic field (Bourdieu, 1996), three types of media can be identified as subfields, based on their modes of production that determines their operation in general: private, commercial media, PSB media and civil society media. The dominant type of media operating in contemporary society is commercial media in private ownership that produces goods within the capitalist system with an aim to maximize profit. This results in the production of media content that, among other things, reproduces the hegemonic discourse and reinforce market dominance and profit orientations as highest social values, legitimized through the ‘market demand’ i.e. the demand of the audiences. Needless to say, this does not provide room for the media to fulfill their public role assigned to them in democratic political systems. The other type of media is the PSB, financed through license fees, that are institutionally closely connected to the state and the ways cultural values are defined in that domain – they offer a paternalistic state media discourse based on a shared national unity (Carpentier, 2001), legitimized as an institution that serves the public interest. However, as a result of the dominance of commercial media and the overall commodification of society that is the main external force dominating the journalistic field (Bourdieu, 1996), the PSB is undergoing a crisis, especially in terms of production processes that mimic commercial media. In this constellation, the importance of civil society media is rising for several reasons: firstly, as a result of the rising importance of civil society in general viewed as an ‘outsourced’ domain of the neoliberal state ; secondly and more specifically - within the journalistic field - as the result of the fact that journalists previously employed in commercial media lost their positions due to the economic crisis and were forced to find another way to operate ; and thirdly, due to the spread of new technologies that more easily enables engagement in public communication. Since one of the functions of civil society is the “discovery and problem resolution” (Habermas, 451), it could be argued that civil society media has become the main actor that today fulfils the function ascribed to them within democracies, as institutions serving the public interest. In Croatia, it is vivid that critically oriented journalism, analytical texts, investigative journalism, and topics of public interest that are not covered in dominant media are to be found within civil society media, albeit with a marginal audience and insufficient financing. Media policy analysis in Croatia shows that civil society media has emerged as a subfield (Bourdieu, 1996) in the last few years, but structural constraints hinder a stable operation of such media: they are financially weak, and journalists work in precarious conditions. Thus, the paper will use the journalistic field (Bourdieu, 1996) as a theoretical framework for the analysis of internal and external workings of the field with a focus on the subfield of civil society media, which will be applied to the concrete case of Croatia.

journalistic field ; subfields ; news media ; civil society media

nije evidentirano