Naslov
The Pendulum Model of Croatian Media Policy: Swinging between Public Interests and Market Liberalisation

Autori
Bilić, Paško ; Švob-Đokić, Nada

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Izvornik
Communication for Empowerment: Citizens, Markets, Innovations - 5th European Communication, Research and Education Conference (ECREA) / - , 2014, 95-95

Skup
European Communication Research and Education Association : Communication for Empowerment: Citizens, Markets, Innovations (5 ; 2014)

Mjesto i datum
Lisabon, Portugal, 12.11.2014. - 15.11.2014

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
Post-communism; institutional change; reflexive modernization; unintended consequences; public broadcasting service; digitalisation; market liberalisation

Sažetak
Being a former socialist country, Croatia had to de-construct and re-create its political, economic and social institutions. The media as main outlets for values of freedom of expression, independence and pluralism were one of key areas where these changes could be monitored. As a new EU country, Croatia internalized the European normative requirements, but these have not created entirely expected outcomes. Largely summarized in an ideologically framed discourse of Europeanisation and practiced through the direct transfer of some media regulations, the EU influences have been supportive of modernization, institutional change and national regulation of the media, but not adapted to the local situation and restructuring capacities. These influences have however been concentrated and clearly visible in an effort to establish a national media policy with the aim to restructure communication processes both within and outside of the country. The policy primarily affected the public media restructuring and helped a rather comprehensive and fast digitization processes which strongly influenced the public communication sphere and inspired its structural changes. The long-term restructuring process has left the country with rather weak democratic institutions and poor implementation of the existing legislation. From a comparative perspective that offers an interesting case about the interface between normative requirements and social contexts in the development of media institutions. Due to a lack of explicit media strategies and holistic policy programs, media reforms were usually a part of broader liberalization reforms, ad hoc political interventions, or EU inspired policies. In that sense, standards of public interest fulfillment in media reporting were often lost in crude market liberalization with media policy swinging between open promotion of public interest and laissez-faire liberalization. In the absence of strong civil society and its democratic influences Croatian media policy has been marked by the strong state and political standpoints and exposed to the anarchic tendencies of disorganization that emerge from the processes of dissolution of public sphere, ungovernable interventions of multinational media companies and a weak and small emerging media market. Poorly envisioned, short-term policies created a fertile ground for the multiplication of unintended consequences of policy interventions and resulted in the inability to control or predict the changes in this fast evolving environment. In this presentation two cases of media reforms will be addressed. The first will show how the digitization process and the restructuring of the Public broadcasting service (PBS) destabilized this media institution and diminished its influence of the social sphere. The second will deal with the attempts of structuring the new media market through ad hoc interventions based on poorly written and outdated legislation.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Sociologija

POVEZANOST RADA