Žiniasklaidos politika Lietuvoje

LTMonografijoje nagrinėjamas Lietuvos žiniasklaidos politikos formavimo procesas septynių parlamentinių ciklų metu, veikiant šešiolikai Lietuvos Vyriausybių nuo 1990 iki 2016 metų. Knygoje atskleidžiama, kaip žiniasklaidos politikų formulavo Lietuvos Vyriausybės ir kokia žiniasklaidos politika buvo formuojama priimant teisės aktus bei kokie žiniasklaidos politikos lauko veikėjai (valstybės institucijos, interesų grupės ar pavieniai asmenys) turėjo įtakos sudarant politikos darbotvarkę ir priimant politinius sprendimus. [Anotacija knygoje]Reikšminiai žodžiai: Žiniasklaida; Žiniasklaidos politika; LRT; Media; Media policy; National Radio and Television; Public broadcasters.

ENThis book is a study of the Lithuanian media policy-making process during seven parliamentary cycles, when sixteen Lithuanian governments were acting between 1990 and 2016. The aim of this study is to determine how media policies were formulated by the Lithuanian governments, what media policies were materialized through legislation, and what actors of the media policy field had influenced the setting of the policy agenda and the making of policy solutions. The study employs the theoretical multiple streams framework (Kongdon 1984; 1985; Zahariadis 2003), which indicates that there are three independent processes in the political system, or three streams, with their own rules and dynamism: streams of political problems, policy solutions, and politics (Herweg, Zahariadis, Zohlnhofer 2017; Zahariadis 2003). Certain issues enter the political agenda when all three discussed streams combine together at certain critical moments (Zahariadis 2003). Kingdon (1984) referred to these moments as policy windows and defined them as short-term opportunities for proposals’ advocates (politicians, lawyers, lobbyists, etc.) to provide preferred solutions or to draw the attention of key political actors to the issues they need to address. In order to combine all of the streams of political problems, policy solutions, and politics in the political process, three necessary conditions must be met: (1) the streams must be mature (that is, the issues, their solutions, and the corresponding policy actions must be sufficiently developed, and subjects of the streams have to be prepared for any change of the political agenda); (2) the window of public policy must to be opened (this action is a result of changes of the streams of political problems and politics); (3) so-called policy entrepreneurs (or proposals’ advocates) must be active to combine the streams (Herweg 2017).When we apply the multiple stream framework for media policy analysis, it is important to assess the specificity of the potential of media power for policy process, as managers of public power are at the same time involved in the policy process. Therefore, when analyzing media policy-making (and focusing on the stages of agenda setting, policy formulation, and decision-making), the element of the media's power paradigm is incorporated into the multiple stream model. In the stream of political problems, where certain issues become part of the political agenda due to relevant information provided and due to the interpretation of a relevant policy issue, media organizations have additional potential in the media policy process to open the window of the problem. When policy entrepreneurs (representing media organizations) join the political process in the public policy window, the coordination of the media's public power and any corresponding political relations can become a decisive factor in political decision-making. According to the multiple stream model, we consider the beginning of a parliamentary political cycle as a starting point in the process of Lithuanian media policy-making, when a new government program is drawn up and a media policy agenda is set up (or partly set up) in the politics stream. The agenda of media policy is being changed (refined and supplemented) in the public policy window because of the interests of various policy shareholders and since media organizations use the opportunity utilize their power in public communication. New media policy issues (or alternatives to the existing problems) may be initiated by members of the Parliament, the President, media regulatory authorities, or political entrepreneurs, including representatives of media organizations and associations. Certain problems that have not been formulated in the Government program can also be added to the Government (the Ministry of Culture) agenda.The matters of the stream of political problems - indicators, attention-focusing events and their interpretations - affect the media policy agenda only in individual cases (usually when their initiation is favorable to media organizations). The stream of policy solutions involves interaction between public authorities, media organizations and associations, and other interested individuals/organizations on a particular issue, where policy entrepreneurs also play an important role. To achieve the aim of this study, two approaches to media policy research, formulated by Loisen (2012), were taken into account: the historical approach when dealing with the sequence of events, and the legal approach when analyzing the legislative process. There is a combination of these two approaches in the book, because the legislative steps are consistently carried out, among other events, on the political agenda. An analysis of the process of media policy-making was conducted by qualitatively analyzing documents and sources of public communication (the press, internet news portals, the websites of state institutions, etc.). This study demonstrated a specific characteristic of Lithuanian media policy - that the consistent policy process (when the government’s agenda evolves into a decision agenda in the Parliament) was not dominant, as the media policy agenda was often drawn up in the Parliament, leaving for the government the role of a formal coordinator but not a policy-maker. It was determined that in the programs of the governments of Lithuania (which had acted between 1990 and 2016), and in the plans of their implementing measures, the media policy agendas were inconsistent, dividing the commitments of this policy area into various sections of the programming documents. [...]. [From the publication]

• Politikos mokslai / Political sciences
• Komunikacija / Communication