Panel Report: Citizenship in and through Media

Chair: Nico Carpenter

Speakers

Mykolas J. Drunga, Vytautas Magnus University
Zdeněk Sloboda, Palacký University in Olomouc
Brindusa Armanca, State University of Arad
Monika Kopytowska, University of Lodź

Zdeněk Sloboda and Mykolas J. Drunga
© Jakub Plíhal

The panel which was in fact based on the presentations of the outcomes of various academic works. It  was opened by a speech by the Lithuatian academic Mykolas J. Drunga. Having much to say in little time, his speech was rather hasty and loud, but nonetheless presented in a perfect American accent. He addressed the historical roots of Lithuanian independence which shall be embedded in “books and newspapers”. In his view, until 1940, the guiding principle of press in Lithuania was advokacy of a particular ideology. During the Soviet times, the Lithuanian “underground press was a good example of citizen journalism – produced by people who never attended journalistic schools.” Furthermore, a number of publications had been regularly smuggled into the country from the West.

The young Zdeněk Sloboda of Palackého University firstly noted that his presentation is not so much about journalism as about the medial reflection of Czech GLBT community and GLBT media. He then reminded the audience of the theoretical background of the community which relies on historical continuity, shared experience, specific lifestyle, common political aim etc. However, according to Sloboda, “homogenity is questionable as various men and women have different experience and their lifestyles very much differ”. The post-revolutionary evolution of GLBT movement has been in his view “spectacularly successful without spectatular mobilization”. The relation to the media may be threefold: media approach existing communities; communities developing around media; ignorance of the media towards the community. Referring to his university research, Sloboda reiterated his focus aimed namely on the general media reflection of  issues of “us” and “them”, visualisation of the community etc. In his conclusions, the speaker inter alia claimed that the media depictment of GLBT community has a ‘normalizing’ effect on the public perception.

Brindusa Armanca and Monika Kopytowska
© Jakub Plíhal

Ethics in the journalism of ecological disasters was the topic of Romanian Brinduse Armanca. Focusing on two specific case studies – Baia Mare cyanide spill of 2000 and  the ‘Red mud disaster’ which took place in Hungary last year – she defined the aim of her research as finding out what happened to the media perception of such catastrophies in ten years. In the Baia Mare case “all the reporting started only one week after the event. Neither the media, nor the public were interested in environmental subject”. On the contrary, the reports of the ‘red mud’ case commenced in an hour. In both cases, however, the reporters declared the following risks nad pressures: difficulties in communication with authorities, political pressure, concern about the accuracy of the information provided, lacking protective material. In Armanca’s perception, the main factual differences between the cases include the larger level of danger in the Romanian case and the much larger spectalurality of the Hungarian one: “Everybody was there to show the red mud. Focus was on the show.”

The last presenter, Monika Kopytowska of University of Lodź elaborated on post-election violence cases and the issue of ethical responsible journalism. In her research, she not only dealt with the reflection of ithe Kenyan 2007 post-election bloodshed in the Kenyan and Western media but also in the media of the neighbouring states. “What was interesting was that on the day of the elections, Government representatives organized a meeting with media people and told them that they need to keep the temper down.” When the violence erupted, the media unified to give a similar reflection of the events, being printed out with a single headline “Save our beloved country”.