Reflecting Social Heteroglossia and Accommodating Diverse Audiences — a Challenge to the Media

Abstract

One aspect of the recent transformation processes in Central and Eastern Europe was the disintegration of larger political entities into states based on a nation principle. Nationalistic ideologies could to some extent fill the void left after the formerly powerful socialist and communist ideologies had disintegrated. The role of media in ethnic polarisations and conflicts and their participation in spreading hate speech became an important topic on an international level in the 1990s. The transformation of the media systems in the former socialist and communist countries was monitored by European and international institutions which mainly used the Western European post-Second World War media order, based on the idea of a dual media system with a strong public-service sector acting within a national public sphere as a blueprint. At the same time on a worldwide scale globalisation processes already accelerated a power shift from state institutions to supranational and to local bodies. In the media and communication sector this reconfiguration became obvious particularly rapidly.