The impact of political regimes on the media. Comparative analysis of the mass-media functioning under various types of political regimes. Specific characteristics of the mass-media and journalism under totalitarian, authoritarian and democratic regimes.
Аннотация к работе
Kharkiv State Academy of Culture THE MASS-MEDiA AND POLiTiCAL REGiMES (THE PROBLEM OF MASS- MEDiA DETERMiNATiON BY POLiTiCAL REGiMES) O. Romanyuk, Doctor in Political Sciences, Professor O. Kovalenko, Candidate of Science in Social Communications, Associate Professor, The problem of determination of the mass-media by a political regime is important for Ukraine, which is still on the way from totalitarianism to democracy. The mass-media are an important factor in the transformation process. On the one hand, the media is the subject of transformation processes, because it varies in the context of the overall changes in the socio-political relations, but at the same time, it acts as the actor of this process since it significantly affects the changes. The issue of the influence of the regime on the media is covered by writings of prominent political scientists (Hannah Arendt, Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Raymond Aron) and specialists in social communications (Doris Graber and Johanna Dunaway, Avtandyl Tsuladze). However, the degree of comparative study of the media functioning under different political regimes is still inadequate. Although the specific features of the media under separate types of modern political regimes is well studied, no research on their general system comparison was found. The purpose of this article is a comparative analysis of the mass-media in the context of main types of regimes. The functioning of the mass-media is conditioned by structural features of the main types of political regimes. Today the political science distinguishes three main types of political regimes: the totalitarian, authoritarian and democratic ones. Totalitarianism and democracy occupy extreme positions on the political regimes scale because they are diametrically opposed in their structural characteristics. Totalitarianism is a generic monopoly regime. It is characterized by: 1) political monopoly - monopoly of one (totalitarian) party in the government; 2) economic monopoly - state monopoly in the means of social production; 3) ideological monopoly - monopoly of one (party) ideology that tries to subjugate the entire social culture. In authoritarianism, the political sphere functions on a monopoly basis. But unlike totalitarian monopoly which has a party nature, an authoritarian monopoly is elitist. An authoritarian regime can functions on a non-party (military dictatorship, for instance), one-party (the party serves as political support of the regime and does not interfere in public administration) and multi-party (there are several parties, but they don’t exert any a significant impact on the government) basis.