The study indicates that political, economic and social faces of Slovenia have changed substantially during the half-decade of the crisis. While the ability of citizens to influence important political decisions has been curtailed on both the national and transnational level, instability has become endemic and social solidarity has been eroded. By using quantitative and qualitative content analysis the study analyses how the unfolding crisis has been communicated in the media in the 2008-2013 period with respect to the dynamics between structure and agency as well as regarding the key (inter)national features and contours of the crisis. The study indicates Slovenian news media hardly served as an integrative force and a common forum for an inclusive and open debate. Namely, results of the quantitative content analysis indicate that journalism communicated the "causes" for the crisis by portraying it as something purely accidental, while rarely pointing at the possibility of its systemic nature. Similarly, "solutions" have been predominantly portrayed within the prevailing paradigms or through the neoliberal prism favoured by holders of political and economic power. Qualitative content analysis of how Slovenian news media communicated the decisive breaks and formative moments of the unfolding crisis shows they mostly relied on event orientation, simplistic juxtapositions and naturalisation of the established power divisions on national as well as international levels.
COBISS.SI-ID: 33098333
The article offers a theoretical reflection on the processes of democratisation in Slovenia, noting the new social movements as a key player initiating and directing the democratic transformation, although we can detect their marginalisation after the consolidation of the "new" or "bourgeois" civil society. The new chronotope of the analysis further shows that the role of social movements was a necessary but not a sufficient condition for political, economic and social changes since during the second phase of the democratisation a political detachment is already underway, culminating in a definitive break with the political elites (old and emerging) already before independence. The key point of contestation and divergence is identified in the opposing understandings of democracy and the democratisation process itself.
COBISS.SI-ID: 514815
In the current historical epoch contradictions, which often remain unsolved, have multiplied. Wecanattribute this to the fact that contradictions are a constitutive part of capitalist societies. The author emphasizes that in the current historical epoch contradictions also broaden and expand into communication and the communicative sphere, which lay at the centre of his analysis. Author points out that social changes and communication technologies, which cannot be analysed outside of the wider social relations, need to be analysed in a historical manner, in the context of the existing asymmetries of power, inequalities and by considering key reasons for their emergence and specific historical development. The starting point of the monograph isin the political economy of communication, which is the key critical approach in media and communication studies. Author provides a critique of the process of commodification, which is defined(in the approach of political economy of communication) as one of the key processes in the capitalist societies, which is inherent to it. It is pointed out that political economy of communication offers a unique and (especially for Slovenian academia) original way of analysing (mass) media. Only this research tradition offers – with its theoretical insights, conceptual apparatus and existing explanations – a way of holistically analysing structural, historical changes and the most fundamental social relations, with special focus on communication, media, and information. Analyses in the book move between fundamental theoretical insights that build on critical approaches to social sciences, and currently topical issues. A deep historical insight is offered in the processes of commodification of communication and in the expansion of capital as such. Contradictions and limits in the field of media, technologies and communication are thoroughly analysed, while different aspects of new information and communication technologies are analysed as well, because they make possible both new forms of social surveillance (and so-called surveillance capitalism) and emancipatory forms of political activism. Reasons, why media can contribute to the stabilisation of the existing order, are analysed as well.
COBISS.SI-ID: 277552384