Mass communications and political culture: authoritarianism and press representations of political deviance in Greece

This study focuses on the role of the politics of signification, and in particular, on the role of the press in the reproduction and transformation of political culture.

It is suggested that the systemic/behaviourist approach to political culture initiated by the "Civic Culture Thesis" proposed by Almond and Verba limits the scope of the study of political culture. It is therefore argued that a reformulation of the concept of political culture premised upon post-Parsonian critical social science traditions (such as the work of R. Williams, the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and P. Bourdieu, provides a new interdisciplinary framework that permits the consideration of hitherto little explored aspects of political culture formation, reproduction and change such as the role of mass communications in these processes. In this, alternative theoretical context, a provisional attempt is made to examine the possible links between mass communications and the reproduction/change of political culture.

The empirical part of this work explores the process of formation and reproduction of authoritarian elements of Greek political culture through the political press and is divided in two sections. The first examines the social/historical processes which led to the formation and reproduction of contemporary Greek political culture and the development of the Greek political press. In the second part, I examine the Athens press performance with particular reference to press representations of the confrontation between the state and a social/political minority which has become known as "the marginals". The press "test" then is interpreted on the basis of the social/historical context, in which it is produced and interpreted, and its relationships with Greek political culture is examined.

The argument is concluded with a provisional consideration of the relationship of political culture and the press, based on the theoretical and empirical evidence, thus preparing the ground for further study of political culture and mass communications.