Continuities and discontinuities: changing patterns in journalism and media in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

The aim of this Special Issue of Central European Political Studies is to bring media scholars together and to reflect on the current trends in political journal-ism in our region. The focus of the articles is trained on the discovery of the shifts and continuities in journalistic practises 25 years after the collapse of the commu-nist regimes. Some of the findings and conclusions presented in the volume come from studies conducted within the framework of international comparative research projects such as Worlds of Journalism, Journalistic Role Performance Around the Globe, or Media Accountability and Transparency in Europe (MediaAcT). The others come from single, national empirical studies or analyses on the media systems con-ducted in the Central and Eastern countries. I n the introductory chapter of Making the News: Journalism and News Cultures in Europe, Pascal Preston (2009) provides a comprehensi-ve overview of the complexity and multidimensional nature of resear-ching the news making and journalistic culture in Europe. To describe and explain the characteristics of contemporary political journalism mul-tilayers of analysis have been proposed by the book: first, the individual level influences such as professional values and role perceptions narrated by journalists and media workers; second, the media industry routines (institutional practises and norms that shape daily news making); third, the influence of politics and the economy; and finally the perspective of the symbolic content and meanings in the news media that may be linked to the broader patterns of social and cultural power (p. 12). In addition, Preston argues that journalistic culture is now in a state of flux.