Page 167 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

156 COMMUNICATION AND CITIZENSHIP

press. Moreover, the authorities have long been unable fully to regulate
the political role of all the print media, with some evading
governmental control altogether.
A time of strife, of political turmoil, conflicts and social upheavals,
dissent, a sense of injustice and being discriminated against, the flare-up
of discontent over a particular issue—all these, together with lack of
freedom of speech and of the press, have the effect of radicalizing and
politicizing groups and individuals. This prompts them either to become
communicators in their own right, setting up media as close as possible
to the autonomy pole of the continuum, or information seekers, eager to
seek out media giving expression to their views and experience. This
helps explain why the apparatus of ‘cognitive control’ has almost never
been leak-proof in Poland.

HOW MANY PUBLIC SPHERES IN POLAND?
We believe that in addition to the official public sphere, Poland has had,
since at least 1956, a second, alternative one, connected to the Roman
1
Catholic Church. In 1976, they were joined by an opposition public
sphere, since 1980 connected chiefly, but by no means exclusively, to
Solidarity. We confine our analysis here to their media aspects.
The official public sphere was not designed to serve an unfettered
rational discourse culminating in the articulation of popular will.
Nevertheless, with different factions and tendencies within the broadly
understood power structure using different newspapers and radio and
television programmes to voice their views, the media of that sphere
have served as a forum of political and ideological debate. Interestingly,
internal bulletins and periodicals published at times of crisis and power
struggles by local party committees, testifying to the need for additional
outlets for the expression of opinion, have been defined as ‘alternative
media’ within the official public sphere (Pisarek 1982).
Poland has some fifty newspapers and periodicals (including
one daily) published by the Roman Catholic Church or by Catholic
organizations, with a total circulation of some 2 million copies (cf.
Koźniewski 1987). Other churches and denominations also have their
own periodicals, though on nothing like the scale of the Catholic press.
Newspapers and periodicals in this category have always been a major
forum for voices from outside the system, which is why we regard them
as part of the alternative public sphere. Many of them deal with a wide
range of political, economic and social issues, providing a channel for
the expression of dissident views on all matters of importance to the