Westernization and Westification: Social and Media Change in Central and Eastern Europe. A Polish Case Study

The purpose of this paper is to test one of the many ways of tracking the progress of media transformation in Central and Eastern Europe in the context of European integration, based on a descriptive/analytical and relativistic research approaches. The conceptual and analytical framework adopted for the analysis of the process is an institutional and cultural one, which is best suited in this case of “systemic transformation” of an exceptionally large scope. The dissidents’ primary weapon of struggle against the Communist system, and their main objective for the future was civil society, a model of “ethical” civil society with its many idealistic features. This and concept of the media institutions of civil society, as described in the article, are taken as the criteria for assessing the results of the systemic transformation. Because of a number of characteristics of post-Communist societies, including a high politicisation of public life, a weak state and weak society, a low level of public involvement on the part of citizens, etc. the goal of developing a civil society has not truly been attained. Also the media system falls short of what the dissidents hoped it would be, involving only the privately owned print media and public and commercial broadcasting. In most post-Communist countriest this “standard model” has meant the empowerment primarily of the new political and business elites. This analysis shows that in the Polish case the views of the 1980s dissidents could not serve as an accurate predictor of their own later policies and behaviour, nor indeed of the direction and consequences of transformation. Therefore, the early views and concepts of the initiators of that transformation cannot provide a set of criteria for judging the progress and success of that process.