Splichal’s book argues that the attempts at erasing “the public” from the map of publicness inevitably lead to blunting the intellectual power of critical theory; thus, much of the work presented in this book is aimed at “rehabilitating” the notion of “the public” in critical theory, as well as its French and German (alongside with British-American) godfathers. Splichal sets out to restore the almost forgotten figure of the public and the neglected idea of publicness to the core of debates on the future of the public sphere. The result is an exhilarating intellectual journey that combines a masterful history of these ideas in motion, as responses to the emergence of democratic nation states, with a trenchant discussion of the challenges they now face in a world system where issues around cosmopolitanism, regional integration, and global governance are moving to centre stage.
COBISS.SI-ID: 30762333
The study provides a historical inquiry into online journalism newsroom arrangements in the context of the Slovenian media environment. The author concentrates on two leading Slovenian newspapers, Delo and Dnevnik, and explores spatial organisation, editorial decision-making and news-making routines by adopting three qualitative methods: observation, interviews and document analysis. The study shows that online journalism at respective newspapers developed through three phases: (1) from one-man bands where individual online staffers performed as multifunctional all-rounders having the technical tasks of shovelling print content online (mid- 1990s to early 2000s); (2) through organisationally and spatially separate online departments where standardisation of news-making routines was mainly defined by the principle of speed (mid-2000s to late 2000s); and (3) to newsroom integration with distinct models of decisionmaking, spatial organisation and print-online relations (late 2000s onwards).
COBISS.SI-ID: 32401757
In contemporary societies there is a growing need to coordinate and legitimize different perspectives. Instead of a dialogical search for consensus polarizing communication still prevails. The legitimacy of formal political institutions and conventional forms of political participation is in decline; increasingly publicly expressed peopleʼs need for a greater influence on social developments reveals a deficit in approaches how to include them more actively in discussions on complex social problems. There has been a growing number of theoretical and empirical appeals to advance deliberation within governmental bodies and public institutions, as well as in a form of direct citizen involvement in (organized) face-to-face meetings. Yet, no radical shift has been made (so far), largely due to poor understanding of subjective and intersubjective (psychological) aspects of deliberation - the exploration of these aspects is the aim of this article. The case is being made for using till now unstudied influence of attachment style on the quality of deliberation and on the readiness to transform and coordinate attitudes with others in a deliberative process.
COBISS.SI-ID: 32334173
The study indicates that political, economic and social faces of Slovenia have changed substantially during the half-decade of the crisis. While the ability of citizens to influence important political decisions has been curtailed on both the national and transnational level, instability has become endemic and social solidarity has been eroded. By using quantitative and qualitative content analysis the study analyses how the unfolding crisis has been communicated in the media in the 2008-2013 period with respect to the dynamics between structure and agency as well as regarding the key (inter)national features and contours of the crisis. The study indicates Slovenian news media hardly served as an integrative force and a common forum for an inclusive and open debate. Namely, results of the quantitative content analysis indicate that journalism communicated the "causes" for the crisis by portraying it as something purely accidental, while rarely pointing at the possibility of its systemic nature. Similarly, "solutions" have been predominantly portrayed within the prevailing paradigms or through the neoliberal prism favoured by holders of political and economic power. Qualitative content analysis of how Slovenian news media communicated the decisive breaks and formative moments of the unfolding crisis shows they mostly relied on event orientation, simplistic juxtapositions and naturalisation of the established power divisions on national as well as international levels.
COBISS.SI-ID: 33098333
Publicity contributed significantly to the democratic social order; it legitimized the media as constitutive of the public and public opinion. Despite the enormous technological and social changes in the era of globalization, there are still many "old" assumptions about the public sphere which remain in force, but also many "old" contradictions unresolved. More than new interpretations of public sphere, efforts are needed for publicity as a personal right to communicate in public, surveillance of the public over government (governance), and mediation between the state and civil society.
COBISS.SI-ID: 28979805