MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA

MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA
political decision-making. Media and politics (i.e. from its beginnings of
formalisation and institutionalisation) went always together determining
each other and shaping each others because they were setting the limits
and opening the spaces for providing information. Media are inevitable
tool for politicians, i.e. those elected in elections by public, to spread
and defend their positions and visions, and a tool for people to make
their own standpoint, vision and position about the politicians they
voted for as given by Zeller that “…The basic interest of citizens is to
hold politicians accountable on the basis of what the politicians have
accomplished while in ofice or say they will accomplish if elected to
ofice.“ 26 As given in his book on media and politics, both politicians and
journalist prove their interest in having the content of news under their
control. And democracy, to be a real liberal democracy, does need an
interest of media and politicians to be always in an accord; otherwise
no discussion on political topics is required blocking thus the plurality
of views. Today’s technologies, fortunately, open a room for alternative
channels of information (however, their credibility is disputable
sometimes) also to politicians (and for public, naturally) to utilize other
than those formalised forms of medial communication (as blogs, social
networks and others) for their promotion and even to defending their
standpoints.
The modern media do not fail their elementary role, i.e. to provide
information. As proved by Laswell in his study, media provide information
for decision-makers through their performance. In this context he set out
basic roles of media, as surveillance of the environment interconnected
to correlation of the parts of society responding to the environment and
related to transmission of the heritage (mainly the social one) from one
generation to another. 27
I claim, that these three roles fulil also political role (i.e. not only role
of social socialisation but also of political education) as they provide
background of the foreign policy taking. Since the media can provide
support to or be an opponent to oficial governmental position or
positions on the given topic or issue, in the practice through informing
26 ZALLER, J.: A Theory of Media Politics, How the Interests of Politicians,
Journalists and Citizens Shape the News, Chicago : University of Chicago
Press, 1999, p. 28.
27 LASSWELL, H.: The structure and function of communication in society.
[online]. [2015-03-25]. Available at: , p. 228.
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