Author:

Keywords:

media, politics, political culture, transparency of governance

Abstract:

One of the basic questions with regard to the relationship between media and politics is: ‘who is in control?’ or ‘who controls whom?’. A crucial element hereby is control over (the flow of) information. In our article we describe the prevailing attitude towards information in a given society by using the concept of information climate or information culture, in line with the concept of political culture. The information culture can be labelled as universalistic – when information is considered a universal right, available to everyone (journalists, citizens, ..) on the same basis – or particularistic – when information is considered a particular right or privilege, not on the same basis available to everyone (only for selected journalists, citizens, ..). This classification goes beyond the rough ‘openness versus secrecy’ extremes and allows an insight into the deeper value orientation of a given society and consequently an understanding of a specific situation. The theoretical views are tested and illustrated at the hand of the case of communist and post-communist Russia.