Suchergebnisse

The Kosovo crisis once again brought the powerful, unscrupulous and destructive Milosevic media apparatus into the spotlight. This is nothing new nor surprising for all those who have been covering his political ascent from the very beginning, but this time he used his heaviest artillery, never mincing words nor flinching from using all possible means to achieve his ends: to justify the genocidal policy and rallying Serbs once again around the well-known platform of national unity and Greater Serbia rhetoric. On one side, we had a well-oiled media machine that mercilessly rolled over everything on its way, not respecting any basic journalistic principles, not to mention ethics. On the other side, there were the most powerful world media, aggressive, assertive, equipped with the state-of-the-art technology, but with one major flaw: these are mass media, not a propaganda machinery. Two completely different structures clashed head-on. Thus, the media in war turned into the war of the media, a totally unfair war between a powerful propaganda machine and democratic media. (SOI : S. 113)

Electronic media in many countries have from their inception been linked and defined with commercial content. However, together with the development of the system of commercial radio, democratic countries very soon began to build and/or revamp the alternative systems of public and/or uncommercial radio. The 1994 Croatian Law on telecommunications again allowed private owner-ship of electronic media and consequently the number of radic-stations doubled. There are 114 of them today (excluding Croatian Radio stations). However, the expected democratization of the media resulted only in an increase of commercial and entertaining broadcasts. The true role of the radio as a public media whose purpose is public dissemination of information has been replaced by a new (and profitable) role of public entertainer. Should radio be left there? (SOI : PM: S. 244)

The current trends in media industry (in the text referred to as concentration trend, diversification, globalization, and deregulation) bring up the question of the scope of classical liberal theory when .faced with the challenges of new communication technologies. The convergence of the market and the capital, the interests from the point of view of ownership and the commercialisation of mass media make up the contextual framework of the debate about certain limitations of the principles of classical liberal theory concerning freedom of the press and media in general. (SOI : PM: S. 176)

This article deals with an analysis of the relations among communicology, novitology, and journalism as the practice of public communication. Communicoloy is defined as a general science on public communication (philosophy of communication), novitology as a specific science dealing with all the singularities of mass communication by means of the mass media (radio, newspapers, television, and the new media), while journalism as practice is defined by means of the methodology of direct journalistic activities. This leads to the introduction of epistemiological order into a number of sciences Also, misunderstandings and overlappings are avoided, as well as totally erroneous attitudes pernicious for the theory of public communication and journalism as the practice of public polylogue in the media. (SOI : PM: S. 214)

With the emergence of television, pre-election campaigns in US shifted its focus from the content and the platform to the image of candidates who became well-packaged products. The biggest election turnout in US occurred exactly at the time of the emergence of this media; however, the percentages of voters' turnout plummeted in the nineties. Enhanced by the attributes of television as a media, the focus on "how" rather than on "what" did not achieve absolute results, and voters responded to the invasion of political image producers with voting abstinence. The latest chapter in pre- election campaigning is the Internet. With its properties and the rapid expansion of the users' net, the new media offers different conditions of communication with voters and is becoming a powerful - and so far, insufficiently utilised - weapon in the hands of pre-election strategists. (SOI : SOEU: S. 191)

In this work, the author analyses three basic requisites for the establishment of a comprehensive information system in Croatia: contemporary worldview, the latest state-of-the-art technology of the electronic media and the new rhetoric of tele-dialogue/polilogue. The author claims that, regarding the implementation of the latest technology, Croatia is on a par with the world (since we have links with the satellite and optical system and the number of the INTERNET subscribers is growing). However, the situation with the growth of political culture is not so rosy, since the media are still far from a constructive polilogue and mostly stoop to the ad hominem rhetoric. The bleakest situation is in the unpreparedness of journalists and citizens for active, participatory communication in powerful polilogist electronic media. + That is why the author advocates a speedier progress in all subsystems, since only through the synergetic linking of the new communicational technology with the new rhetoric of the polilogue, as well as with the responsibility of all the participants in public communication, a comprehensive Croatian information system may be developed. (SOI : PM: S. 215)

What are today's mass media like? Are they objective enough or are consumers too fatidious? How topical the issues of the freedom of the media, truth, and objectivity are? The author has tried to provide the answers by looking into the norms and regulations in Croatia and abroad, beginning with the Code of Honour of the Croatian Association of Journalists, the documents of the Council of Europe and the famous First Amendment to the US Constitution. + A probe into the freedoms of American journalism shows that there are no all-inclusive recipes and that these freedoms must be fought for and won. The best way to secure the right to the freedom of speech is to consistently respect the standards of professional journalism. However, our experience and practice show that this aspect is most lacking. Particularly interesting is how these problems were noticed by Croatian journalists Frano Folnegovic and Bogoslav Sulek more than a century ago. Apart from the political restrictions and pressures, Croatian journalists do not pay enough attention to this respect for the standards of professional journalism, which can best be illustrated by the example of the catastrophe of that American plane near Dubrovnik, when some media reported not only that the plane had safely landed but published the late Secretary's statement. Only by strictly respecting professional standards, which may be achieved through constant improvement, study and research, the preconditions for objective and authentic reporting may be realised. (SOI : PM: S. 165) + Civil society has set up many commissions, councils and committees with the aim of controlling mass media so that they would not only be a profit-amassing industry but would also conform to the fundamental demands that are put on journalism

The article deals, at various levels, with the limits and scope of the media activity, on the example of the latest Balkan war. On the theoretical level, there are three basic modalities in political communication: the positive propaganda (the so called carrot system), the negative propaganda (hard propaganda, aimed at destroying the enemy and its institutions) and, finally, the military propaganda with the military action, i.e. the system of communicating with a "stick". All these modes have been used in the war for Kosovo: Serbia had been positively conditioned for at least the entire decade, then a somewhat stricter model of the negative propaganda was used, and when this led nowhere, in 1999, Milosevic felt the full force of the state-of-the-art military equipment and the communication with a "stick". The author concludes that the media are powerful, but not all- powerful i.e. that they are eclipsed by the military communication, wars and victories or defeats. (SOI : S. 119)

The author describes the basic features of the work in the Journalistic Workshop as a specific format of promoting journalistic knowledge and skills. After the two-year collaboration of three generations of young journalists with a group of Croatian and foreign media experts, a survey was conducted about the usefulness of this Workshop. The results are included in this article. The central conclusion is that a big majority of the participating journalists highly appreciated the knowledge gained through it. Particularly encouraging is the fact that most respondents have been able to use this knowledge regardless of the type of media they are working for (whether those state-controlled or opposition-controlled). The participants think that the responsibility for the impossibility of using the professional standards in journalism lies with "editors afraid of any changes" or "owners weary of any changes". The respondents included young journalists with little work experience, mostly undergraduates. These facts are significant for their attitudes about the professional training within the Workshop or some other form of training. All of them want to learn and enhance their professional expertise. Also, the Workshop served as an incentive for the participants: after the three-month journalistic training, eight of them enrolled at the Faculty of Political Science, Department of Journalism. (SOI : PM: S. 227)

The author provides a definition of political marketing and hightlights its links with democratic polity, reviews the evolution of political marketing from the party to the marketing concept, looks into political marketing as a sort of construction of political reality and analyzes political marketing in Croatia. The author points out that political marketing is resisted by the very people who should make use of it, but that there are some objective circumstances which stand in its way, such as the lack of money, the undeveloped public electronic media, and the still predominantly traditional culture of the society, more inclined to oral communication. (SOI : PM: S. 167)

The paper analyses the development of journalism from practice to theory and outlines the stages in the formation of the science of journalism or novitology. As an interdisciplinary, synthetic science, novitology connects everyday journalistic practice and meta-theoretical deliberations on the scope and the potential of journalism as a social function. While cogitating on the general tasks of journalism, the author focuses on the creation of news, their dissemination, fostering awareness of the methodological instruments, the moral dimensions of journalism, and the modern media technology. All these chain-links should be connected in the journalistic science; also, the relationships and inter-relations among universal, particular, and individual disciplines within the system of novitology should be analysed by means of a systematic methodology. (SOI : PM: S. 221)

The privatisation of electronic media in the Republic of Croatia, particularly that of the radio, has brought about a plethora of thematic changes in the content of broadcasts. Entering the market has turned many radio-programmes into "commodities"; that is why radio-stations increasingly need competent salesmen and not journalists. The survival on the market solely depends on the profits from commercials (advertising), and such programmes do not need journalists. Are commercial radio stations in the near future going to need journalists at all or only good entertainers? Who are the radio-stations' employees and editors? Are the people working on the radio soon to become redundant? The study on this topic was conducted in 1997 at 80 local Croatian radio-stations. (SOI : PM: S. 234)

The author analyzes the current trends of the globalization of trade, capital, mass media, communication, transport, tourism and economic migrations. However, there is the backlash to the globalizing processes: cultural particularism which has mobilized traditions and triggered violent outbreaks of hostilities. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama has pointed out that today the key challenges to liberal democracy are a miscellany of particularistic fundamentalism, national extremism, totalitarism and authoritarian paternalism. Samuel Huntington also warns about the dangers of particularism. Within such a framework, the phenomenon of "ethnic cleansing" is only an extreme form of the trend which has marked the 20th century - ethnical homogenization as a reaction to the problems of multiethnic communities. The author is of the opinion that this development need not represent an obstacle for the dialogue and communication among cultures. (SOI : PM: S. 168)