{"title":"Afrokology and the Right to Communicate in Africa","authors":"Viola c. Milton, W. Mano","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2021.1889830","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2021.1889830","url":null,"abstract":"This article argues for a reconstruction of communication rights theories from an African episteme and experience. It reviews the impact of key national, continental and international legal instruments as they pertain to communication rights in Africa, with a specific focus on South Africa and Zimbabwe. Using an Afrokological heuristic tool, it critically evaluates how the key legal instruments underpinning the right to communicate are developed and encountered in lived experience in decolonising Southern African contexts. We argue that an Afrokological orientation built on epistemological interconnectedness and conviviality may lead to insights otherwise not accessible. It can help awaken a new relational accountability that promotes respectful representation, reciprocity, and rights in communication policy processes in line with the lived experiences of those it is meant to benefit.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"29 1","pages":"33 - 49"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13183222.2021.1889830","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47425446","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"To Mobilise or to Mediate? Re-assessing the Democratic Role of News Media in Social Protests in China","authors":"Y. Liu","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2021.1881747","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2021.1881747","url":null,"abstract":"Protester-sympathising media reports validate activists’ claims, expose official wrongdoing, and mobilise public support, which allows scholars to highlight the importance of the media in promoting democratic participation in authoritarian China. Reaffirming media’s crucial role in sustaining communicative rationality, the article re-evaluates media coverage of four rural protests against land expropriation in China, combining framing analysis of media reports, in-depth interviews, and an extensive reading of court files, etc. It unveils that two storylines—transgressive collective action for maximising economic gains and conflicts inside villages—are tailored off, when information is woven into the dominant media frame “struggle of the weak”. Simplified, but logically coherent, the media narrative is likely to exclude the necessity for public deliberation, reduce the fleeting public activism into anger-venting, and pressures local governments into makeshift concessions at the cost of public good. The one-dimensional civic engagement urges Chinese journalists to consider innovating protest reporting frame.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"28 1","pages":"391 - 406"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13183222.2021.1881747","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42439334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Public Sphere and the Changing News Media Environment in Poland: Towards Structural Polarisation","authors":"B. Klimkiewicz","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2021.1861408","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2021.1861408","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"28 1","pages":"53 - 74"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13183222.2021.1861408","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43940830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"In Memoriam: Jay G. Blumler (18 February 1924–30 January 2021)","authors":"S. Splichal","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2021.1891700","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2021.1891700","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"28 1","pages":"1 - 2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13183222.2021.1891700","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47869101","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Crisis of Agency in Central and Eastern Europe: From the Consolidation of Media Freedom to the Institutionalisation of Free Choice","authors":"Auksė Balčytienė","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2021.1861404","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2021.1861404","url":null,"abstract":"This essay advocates applying a culturally and attitudinally sensitive approach to the analysis of the present-day media and digital communications-inspired societal transformations. In recent years, trends towards the “backslide\" in democratic performance and social cohesion have been registered throughout Europe: the rise of populist politics and extreme polarisation has grown in Western Europe, whereas in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) there is noticed an increase of social and economic instability followed by a dramatic rise of anti-democratic political actions. These developments imply a growing need (especially in the CEE countries) to find their own specific ways of dealing with both-systemic restructurings in social/political life, on the one hand, and intensifying feelings of distrust, uncertainty, and discontent, on the other hand. The essay critically examines the changing functionality and logic of contemporary media and communications ecosystems which notably contrasts with the classical line of thinking about the news media as traditional means of establishing and preserving such subjective senses as feelings of attachment and trust, unity and togetherness, solidarity and social cohesion.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"28 1","pages":"75 - 89"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13183222.2021.1861404","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43423311","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Public Sphere in Hybrid Media Systems in Central and Eastern Europe","authors":"Zrinjka Peruško","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2021.1861405","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2021.1861405","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"28 1","pages":"36 - 52"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13183222.2021.1861405","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43388195","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Politics vs. Antipolitics in the Mediatised Public Sphere: Traversing the Contested Boundary between the Civic and the Political in Bulgaria","authors":"M. Bakardjieva, N. Konstantinova","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2020.1839838","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2020.1839838","url":null,"abstract":"This article offers a review of influential theoretical positions endeavouring to conceptualise the conditions and mechanisms through which civil society can become productively involved in the articulation of public opinion and contribute its voice to political decision-making. It focuses specifically on the contested relationship between civil and political society and the specifics of the discourses they produce in the political public sphere. Employing the so constructed theoretical framework, the article proceeds to take stock of the processes currently unfolding in the Bulgarian public sphere paying special attention to the modes of their mediatisation. In the focus of the analysis is the case of the civil society group Protest Network. It concludes that a social formation labelled the protest sphere emerges out of the experiences of civil society activists who struggle for publicity of their causes and demands. The protest sphere takes the place of the missing mechanisms supposed to transmit the concerns of civil society actors to formal political and legal institutions in an operational liberal democracy. Despite the fact that it is set in motion by members of civil society, the protest sphere is profoundly political and its role in a democratic society needs to be carefully examined.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"28 1","pages":"20 - 35"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13183222.2020.1839838","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46296687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"After the Crisis, A “New Normal” for Democratic Citizenship?","authors":"J. Blumler, S. Coleman","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2021.1883884","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2021.1883884","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"28 1","pages":"3 - 19"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13183222.2021.1883884","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41649611","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Nobody Tells us what to Write about”: The Disinformation Media Ecosystem and its Consumers in the Czech Republic","authors":"V. Štětka, Jaromír Mazák, Lenka Vochocová","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2020.1841381","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2020.1841381","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"28 1","pages":"90 - 109"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13183222.2020.1841381","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59750646","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Free Speech and Ideology: Society, Politics, Law","authors":"Dario Mazzola","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2021.1843848","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2021.1843848","url":null,"abstract":"Free speech remains a crucial question at the heart of every democracy. In Western countries, citizens ranging from progressive fringes to “constitutional conservatives” defend it as frequently as staunchly. In this paper, I discuss the tensions and contradictions of some formulations of free speech. Among other, I draw on two authors converging in their critique from two very different perspectives: Alasdair MacIntyre and Stanley Fish. After having assessed the extreme conception of free speech and having shown its implausibility, freedom of speech is characterised as ideological in at least one definition of the word, that employed by legal realists. I claim that free speech is indeed an incomplete, context-sensitive right granted to someone on some occasions, often depending on extra-legal, historical, sociological, political and practical factors. This leaves the door open to interpretations of the right to free speech as ideological in other and more substantial ways, such as in the venues of Critical Legal Studies. I conclude by drawing implications applicable to our societies in their current conditions, with a special focus on the role of new media.","PeriodicalId":93304,"journal":{"name":"Javnost (Ljubljana, Slovenia)","volume":"27 1","pages":"325 - 336"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13183222.2021.1843848","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42442648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}