Media Research in Socialist Slovenia/Yugoslavia: Some Afterthoughts

• Main Author: Slavko Splichal
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: tripleC 2020-03-01
• Series: tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique
• Subjects: communication theory; empirical research; critical vs. administrative research; journalism education; socialism; bureaucracy; slovenia; yugoslavia
• Online Access: https://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/1160

This afterword to “A Marxist Approach to Communication Freedom” reveals some features of the development of communication theories and empirical research in socialist Slovenia and Yugoslavia. The field started to develop in 1960s in the framework of other academic disciplines, mainly political sciences and partly sociology, but soon became the target of ideological criticism for “the lack of Marxist foundations” in the social sciences in general, and journalism education and communication research in particular, which was part of a more general conflict between party-state bureaucracy and “liberal intellectuals.” By the 1980s, communication and journalism education and research programmes became a regular component of universities in all the republics of the former Yugoslavia. The development of the new discipline was largely marked by “productive inclusivism” or eclecticism, a kind of “cohabitation” of different communication schools and theoretical paradigms that contributed to its definition, development and institutionalisation at universities.