The Imagined Transnational Public Sphere in the European Community's Broadcast Philosophy: Implications for Democracy

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Abstract
This paper argues that emerging policies for transforming diverse configurations of national media into a singular transnational system collide with fundamentally irreconcilable propositions of the meaning and significance of the public interest in the Western democratic tradition. Internal policy contradictions within the EC's notion of `Europeanization' of the media lead to a set of serious implications for the meaning and practice of modern civil society and for the role of communication within it. A transfrontier sector created by the EC has launched a radical trend towards corporatization of broadcasting in Europe, which is in serious opposition to some fundamental principles of the European democratic tradition. Analysis of policy discourse indicates a general trend towards market-oriented reregulation and a retreat from the obligations of broadcast systems to the historical concept of civil society and the status of citizenship constituted within a democratic public sphere.

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