188 Lisa Brooten
International Journal of Communication 10(2016)
It is also clear that the military retains significant influence over parliament and its relationship with
journalists, which needs to change if the transition is to bring more than window dressing.
Political Transitions and Media
The term transition has a contested history. Its reference to political regime change or a period of
major state reforms dates to the 1970s, just before the start of what Samuel Huntington dubbed
democracy’s “third wave.” The field of study called “transitology” emerged as the dominant approach to
understanding this third wave, with the foundational assumption that societies in transition are moving
from dictatorship toward democracy (Carothers, 2002; Sparks, 2010). This approach ignores various
contested meanings of democracy and implicitly takes North American and Western European
democracies, including their media structures and journalistic practices, as universal templates. As Sparks
(2010) puts it, “In general . . . the progress of media in post-dictatorial societies is measured as being the
extent to which the local press and broadcasting approximate to (highly idealized) versions of the New
York Times and the British Broadcasting Corporation” (p. 7). An influential 2002 article by Thomas
Carothers calls for an end to the transition paradigm, pointing out, among other things, how few of the
third wave countries had actually become democratic. He and others have since tried to classify the
various patterns and outcomes among these countries, emphasizing the need for context sensitivity.
Nevertheless, the term transition continues to be used, especially given the color revolutions in the former
Soviet Union in the early 2000s and the Arab Spring, albeit with more sensitivity to these critiques and the
wide variety of outcomes possible for any given political transition.
The state is key in any transition process, and a weak state unable to enforce the rule of law is as
dangerous to a democratic transition and media freedom as a strong, authoritarian state. Freedom of
speech and expression are widely acknowledged as vital to a democratic polity and arguably “a better
indicator of regional democratization than elections” (Obydenkova, 2008, p. 226). Yet a weak state breeds
self-censorship as impunity increases—as in the Philippines, which is widely assumed to have one of the
freest media systems in Southeast Asia, yet historically among the countries with the highest rates of
killings of journalists worldwide. A strong state, on the other hand, is likely to suppress public expressions
of opposition, often using national security as justification.
The most common framing of media conceptualizes them (usually implicitly) primarily as tools for
information transmission, prioritizes professionalism and objective reporting, and defines independence in
relation to the state, with no discussion of independence from commercial interests. Yet community media
or media accessible to the community also play a significant relational, transformative role, creating
symbolic space where identities are negotiated, constructed, and contested (Rodriguez, 2001, 2011).
Scholars and policy makers alike need to pay more attention to these other important roles played by
media, especially in areas of conflict. Recognizing media’s relational, transformative roles makes clear the
need for community access to the means to communicate with others, and not just receive information.
This is vital in multicultural countries in transition, especially those experiencing conflict.
McCargo (2012) argues that comparative media systems models based on conditions in Europe
and North America do not help explain the situation in the countries of the global South, or they require so