Democratic norms between universality and cultural construction. The interpretation of press freedom in eight new democracies

The so-called ‘third wave’ of democratisation has brought about a large range of ‘democracies with adjective’, i.e. democracies that seem to deviate from the norms and practices set by the model of liberal democracy that dominates democratic politics in established western democracies. This observation has raised the question of the boundaries of democracy and whether there are indeed several possible meanings of democracy as the notion of ‘multiple democracies’ (Blokker 2009) implies. In this paper I focus on press freedom as one of the key norm of democratic politics. I argue that the norm of media freedom is ambiguous and does not have a fixed meaning across time and space. Rather, its meaning and practice are subject to constant negotiation between those who are involved in political communication. Drawing on Whitehead’s (2002) ‘interpretavist’ conception of democracy, the paper explores how journalists in new democracies understand press freedom and to what extent these interpretations are embedded in particular cultural traditions and historical trajectories. The empirical research is based on semi-structured interviews collected in eight new democracies from Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Poland), Latin America (Brazil, Chile), Africa (Namibia, South Africa) and Asia (Taiwan, South Korea). The results suggest the emergence of hybrid practices of press freedom that are committed to universal norms while at the same time remain embedded in cultural constructions of their scope and meaning.