RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

Mirko Lukić

THE TRANSFORMATION OF MASS MEDIA

Dr. Mario Plenković, Demokratizacija masovnih medija (The Democratization of Mass Media), Center for Information and Publicity, Zagreb, 1980.

The author of this book, thus far the most substantive one on the transformation, in terms of self-management, of the mass media (radio, television and the press) has empirically and othervvise confirmed Marx’s familiar thesis that the ideological sphere is the last to change, In his analysis, Plenković estabhshes that in the material sphere of socialist society here, the frameworks statism started being abandoned little by little two decades ago, and that social relations started changing on a parallel basis. In a word, according to the author, to date all society has changed on a self-management basis although relations in the field of public communications have remained virtually unchanged. The author has set himself the task of analyzing the possibilities for transforming mass media along self-management lines for unless this is done, as the author rightfully states, it would not be feasible to implement fully the work begun by Yugoslav communists of emancipating the individual and society in a socialist social community of self-management Since апу serious and scholarly discussion of the problem of public communications is impossible without an explanation of basic positions, Plenkovič in his first chapter looks at the problem from the standpoint of contemporary communicology and subjects to analysis three main concepts not only of communicology but also

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