Page 180 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

MUSICAL CHAIRS? 169

public corporation accountable to Parliament and not to the
government. Also the publishing concern may be broken up.
Accordingly, new lines of division will appear in the media world,
depending on how the political situation develops.
3 The new order may—for a time at least—enjoy popular support, but
differences of opinion concerning the best ways of overcoming
Poland’s crisis will run so deep, and dissatisfaction with the
government’s—any government’s—inability to end it quickly will
be so strong, that they will feed the continued existence of different
public spheres. In that case, we may see the emergence of a
dominant one, revolving around the existing social order, and
strong subsidiary ones, speaking for various dissenting groups.

In any case, the Polish situation seems to confirm both the
‘interdependence’ model of society-media relationships and their non-
equivalence in those relationships. What this means is that while the
media can play an active role in promoting, accelerating or slowing
down change, the impetus which decides what role they will play, and
what processes they will promote, comes from outside the media system,
and their effectiveness in moulding change is also decided largely by
external factors. In line with the view advanced by Peterson, Jensen and
Rivers (1966), as long as Poland’s political system was relatively
stable, the opposition public sphere was less of a threat to its continued
existence. Its growing instability, ineffectiveness and all-encompassing
chaos made them into a much more potent force.
The Polish situation also confirms that the political process is a
major, and perhaps even the major macrostructural determinant of the
media scene. The official public sphere was obviously shaped by
political considerations and designed to serve primarily political goals.
The motivations behind the establishment and growth of the opposition
public sphere were also predominantly political. And it was the
fundamental change in the country’s political system that made Poland
into such a laboratory for the study of the public spheres and the
relationships among them.
One day, when society does become integrated and united around the
fundamental values of the transformed, democratic and prosperous
social order, Poland may end up having only one public sphere to speak
of.
It will not be a moment too soon.