The Press in Transition adopts a comparative approach to transitional print institutions
worldwide. It is based on some 150 interviews and archival research on four
continents, over a decade of unprecedented global transformation and upheaval.
The dissertation seeks to fill a serious gap in the existing literature on
democratization and political transition. Theoretical chapters advance a comparative
model of press functioning (Chapter 1) and a more tentative model of transitional
media, with a strong focus on the mainstream press (Chapter 6). The bulk of the
work consists of four case-studies, each drawn from a different geographical region
(indeed, continent) and a markedly different "type" of liberalization or transition
process. The case of Nicaragua (Chapter 2) stands out somewhat. It concentrates
almost exclusively on a single newspaper, Barricada, the former official organ of the
Sandinista Front. The newspaper's transformations in the 1990s are, however, set
against the backdrop of Barricades history since 1979, intra-Sandinista politics during
and after the revolutionary era, and the more general interplay of media and politics
in Nicaragua. The remaining three case-studies (South Africa, Jordan, and Russia:
Chaps. 3-5) combine system-level analysis with micro-level portraits of transitional
institutions and individuals.
The core of the theoretical analysis lies in a delineation of "mobilizing" and
"professional" imperatives. The former I attach mainly to sponsors and managers
of media institutions; the latter mainly - not exclusively or universally — to the
editorial side of the operation. The interplay of these variables I see as integral to an
understanding of events at the case-study newspapers. The opening theoretical
chapter situates mobilizing and professional imperatives as both dependent and
independent variables. I argue that they reflect and respond to variables like
underdevelopment, authoritarianism, and pre-existing media culture. But they also
serve as founts of important and interesting initiatives, whether professional,
political, or commercial. Significantly, too, they regularly conflict. The dissertation
struggles to avoid heroicizing, but it also tries to show that tensions and upheavals —
both small-scale and radically transformative - tend to derive from the clash of
mobilizing and professional priorities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/9888 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Jones, Adam |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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