Political Participation and Integration

Abstract

Since the regime changes in the new democracies of Eastern Europe, there have been profound changes not only in political and economic structures, but also in the mass media, which have been transformed beyond recognition (Milton, 1997; O’Neil, 1997; Kleinwächter, 1996). Like their counterparts in traditional, Western democracies, political elites have rapidly adapted to the power of the mass media in framing and shaping politics (Jakubowicz, 1996).¹ In Hungary, attempts to instrumentalize the media and control the editorial content of political reporting resulted in fierce conflict and an openly waged power struggle in 1993. In Slovakia, similar skirmishes are still going on (Hallenberger and Krzeminski, 1994). Workable and acceptable rules of communication are being established to settle such issues as the state’s potential to interfere with the editorial content of news reporting and the opposition’s right to equal access to and fair representation in the media (Downing, 1996). In this section, we concentrate on three questions:

• 1. Are there country-specific differences in the use of political sources of information?

• 2. How intensively are each of these sources used?

• 3. What is the subjective credibility of mass media?