Open access
THE MEDIA DECENTRALIZATION AS A BASIS FOR RESISTANCE AGAINST HEGEMONY: THE CASES OF POLAND, SPAIN AND MEXICO
Radosław SAJNA1
New Media in Action
Publication language: English
Journal article
Transformations No. 3-4 (94-95) 2017, Publication date: 30 November 2017
Keywords: hegemony, media decentralization, Mexico, Poland, Spain
Abstract In discussions about resistance and hegemony the problem of the media decentralization seems to be very important, above all in transition societies aiming to build modern democratic countries. Every authoritarian or totalitarian regime (including fascist, communist and others) creates centralized structures in politics, administration, media and so on. Although in such regimes could exist many regional or local media, they are generally elements of the regime’s propaganda machine. While building democracy, such propaganda machines are to be destroyed, and new media systems are to be created. This does not mean that media systems in new democracies are not centralized. In different countries the hegemony of the national (and international) media located in big capital cities, and owned often by big media corporations or dominated by mainstream political elites, limits the media decentralization, and – as a consequence – the decentralized democracy. Nevertheless, the new media are new practical tools to create a new decentralized democracy, not only in the geographical sense, contributing to resistance against hegemony in centralized communication realities dominated by big media and political elites. In this comparative study three cases of three countries are analyzed. The first is Poland, a country that began transition after the collapse of the communism in the Central and Eastern Europe in 1989 and next years. The second is Spain, a country that began to build new democracy in 1976 after the death of general Franco and the collapse of his regime. The third is Mexico, a country that experienced a long-term regime of the mono-party – or rather coalition – PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) that finished only in 2000 when Vicente Fox of PAN (Partido Acción Nacional) won the presidential elections. These three countries experienced different types of undemocratic regimes and began transitions in different years, but they have also different political and administrative systems. Poland is a unitary country, Spain is a ‘regional’ country with broad autonomies of regions (comunidades autónomas), and Mexico is a federal country (Estados Unidos Mexicanos). Poland and Spain are both members of the European Union and have similar populations (about 41 and 38 millions of people, respectively), and Mexico – ‘New Spain’ in the past – shares cultural roots with Spain, as an ex-colony of this Iberian country. The main questions of this comparative system analy
Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland
E-mail: rsajna@post.pl