Anke Fiedler

JOURNALISTS IN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC (GDR)

The study explores the social background, career stations, working conditions and role-perceptions of journalists in East Germany before the wall came down. Drawing on Bourdieus field theory as well as on interviews and memoirs, it uses 121 career paths to construct a collective biography of journalists. The findings show that journalism was, indeed, closely tied to the centre of power. The dominance of the first two generations of journalists within the field even intensified its political significance. While both the founding and the “Aufbau” generation developed a political role perception, the young could quickly switch to Western standards after 1989.

‘The totalitarian destruction of the public sphere?’ Newspapers and structures of public communication in socialist countries: the example of the German Democratic Republic:

Using the example of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), this study deals with the public sphere in Eastern European countries before 1989. It supports the thesis that even the ‘guided’ and controlled daily press enabled the readers (even in a limited way) to observe the process of communication and to make up their own minds. The article is based on two main sources: files from the Federal archives in Berlin and a series of 100 biographical interviews, held between 2000 and 2002, in which former GDR residents have been asked about their everyday media usage during the 1980s. This article discusses the concept of public communication and propaganda and shows how the politically staged public sphere operated from the point of view of the rulers and professional readers as well as regular subscribers.

‘It is a crime to be abusive towards the president’: A case study on media freedom and journalists’ autonomy in museveni’s uganda

ABSTRACT Using the case of the hybrid media system of Uganda and Schimank’s approach of agent-structure dynamics, this article argues that media freedom and journalists’ autonomy first and foremost depend on society’s expectations of the media system. Closely linked to those informal structures of expectations which are path and time dependent, journalists’ room for manoeuvre is limited by the resources allocated to individual and collective media actors. In a first step and following Schimank’s approach, the article presents a category system that could drive the analysis of media freedom in Uganda and beyond. The empirical study is based on research material consisting of 30 expert interviews, two elite round tables on site in Uganda and documents. This material shows that both journalists’ working conditions and (related to this and even more important) their perception among the ruling elites, public administrations and those governed, limit media freedom. It is precisely the media’s relative societal position which allowed the government to implement a system of media laws and media regulation authorities which creates arbitrariness and, therefore, a feeling of insecurity within the profession.

A Quasi-public Sphere: Letters to the Editor in the German Democratic Republic

Using the example of the German Democratic Republic, the present article argues that communist leadership established a non-public communication channel between politics, administrations, industry and the population that took on most of the functions of the non-existent public sphere: letters to the editor. By law, those letters were considered petitions. The editorial offices had to register and answer them in a timely manner or transmit them to the authorities for consideration. This policy of focusing on individual cases while avoiding public sphere levels of mass communication and public meetings had two advantages for the ruling communist party: Critics were satisfied and “kept quiet” and other people were left in the dark unless they heard rumours during “encounters”. Those in power accepted that the absence of a critical discursive space hampered the process of innovation and social change—setting the German Democratic Republic apart from countries with autonomous media systems. The petition “solution” could only work as long as the number of critical readers’ letters remained within a reasonable limit, something that became impossible during the crisis of the late 1980s.

Press Freedom in the African Great Lakes Region: A Comparative Study of Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo

Based on the example of three francophone African countries—Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—this chapter enquires about the relevant factors influencing journalistic freedom in (post-)conflict societies. Using 132 expert interviews conducted between July 2014 and January 2016, the study concludes that press freedom, although enshrined in media legislation and promoted through local professional and international media assistance organizations in the region (such as Search for Common Ground, Internews, or the Panos Institute), faces many constraints at every level in the three countries but also that spaces of freedom sometimes exist beyond expectations. Against the theoretical backdrop developed by Ibelema et al. (2000, 98–115), the results show that in times of crisis and conflict, in particular, politics is the dominant factor influencing press freedom, while in more stable periods, other factors, such as economic constraints, are equally important. Nevertheless, each factor includes a wide diversity of internal dynamics, to the extent that one can discern similarities and differences between countries but not numerically assess and rank their levels of press freedom.

The gap between here and there: Communication and information processes in the migration context of Syrian and Iraqi refugees on their way to Germany

Set against the background of the so-called refugee crisis in Germany in 2015/16, this article asks about the subjective value that refugees give different sources of information and examines whether they were making informed decisions during the various stages of their transit. Between November 2015 and April 2016, four focus groups and 36 in-depth interviews were conducted with Syrian and Iraqi refugees, as well as interviews with Iraqi experts in the media and civil society sectors, based on the theoretical concepts of network and broadcast feedback developed by Bakewell and Jolivet. The results show that, unlike the mass media, personal network and narrowcast feedback were the most important sources of information for the studys participants. While most of the interviewees felt adequately informed both before and during their transit, it was mainly after the refugees arrived in Germany that they experienced a deficit of information.

The steering of the press in the socialist states of Eastern Europe: the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as a case study

The present essay will examine the practice of media steering in the GDR to demonstrate how newspapers were used as tools of political public relations. In the struggle to achieve recognition from the population and the outside world, the GDR regime suppressed any information that might prove harmful to its own interests. This theoretical approach and the results of the present study contradict previous research that largely draws on theories about propaganda and totalitarianism, and conclude that the press in the GDR was monotonous, uniform and lacking in informational content.