Friday, July 14, 2017
Turnbull Room (University of Glasgow)
A key element in the establishment of post-democratic hybrid regimes is to marginalize independent media and create a large pro-regime media sector through authoritarian, non-democratic media policies. On the one hand, public service media is transformed into state media that distributes pro-government propaganda. On the other hand, democratic private commercial media is undermined and taken over by pro-regime oligarchs. Only some islands of independent media are left to survive, especially in the print and online sectors with limited audiences. Journalists as well as media owners become subjects of various forms of pressures through legal, political and economic means (in Russia, the threat physical violence, including murder of journalists, is also used). This structural transformation of the media system characterized the establishment of the hybrid political system of Russia after Putin’s takeover in 2000 and Hungary’s hybrid regime after Orban’s takeover in 2010. Recent attempts to restructure the media system along similar lines in Poland also indicate that authoritarian media and communication policies constitute a key feature establishing and maintaining hybrid regimes. In this paper I argue that pro-regime media serve crucial functions by maintaining legitimacy of hybrid regimes in several ways, including a) ensuring the hegemony of nationalist and other pro-regime and pro-leader discourses; b) blocking the coverage of unconstitutional state policies and illegal governments actions, including government corruption; c) campaigns against the opposition and its leaders to prevent the formation of formidable political alternatives. The paper concludes by pointing out the learning-process-concerning the know-how of public-opinion-management among post-communist authoritarian-regimes.
