| Abstract [eng] |
It has been shown, that the amount of politically tendentious contents in the media has recently increased. Opinion journalism, too, has an impact on the public opinion (“punditocracy”). However – especially focusing on the relevant Lithuanian data – the factors influencing the line-up of authors, the agenda of issues/topics, the spectrum of alternative political views given a voice have not yet been investigated. This dissertation reports from a study of the Lithuanian opinion journalism (on the policy of education). The data collected – during structured interviews (n = 6) with editors in charge of channels’ opinion sections, – during an investigation of the dynamics of author rotation; the authors’ questionnaire data (n = 68; n = 25), – and the data collected investigating the opinion publications themselves (n = 173) were compared. The study revealed that the opinion sections published by Lithuanian media outlets form relatively spontaneously. The right to make decisions is usually delegated to the discutants. The discutants, however, diverge significantly from each other in their definitions of quality, in their intentions (e.g., “to make a name” vs. profit motive vs. authentic pursuit of policy change), in their experience and in the intensity of their (political) commitment. We conclude that the final product – the public debate on specific policy issues, e. g., education policy – is characterized by disorganization, plurimorphic non-dialogic argumentation and fragmentation. |
