Listening in on the Neighbors: The Reception of German and Austrian Radio in Cold War Czechoslovakia

In 1966, a Radio Free Europe (RFE) report estimated that seven in ten Czechs and Slovaks listened to Radio Vienna, making it the most popular foreign station in Czechoslovakia. Yet conventional narratives of Western radio in socialist central Europe highlight the role played by runner-up RFE. By focusing on the practice of listening to German-language radio in Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1969, this article shows that cross-border, German-language listening mattered not only between the Germanies, but also in central Europe, where listening habits were shaped by the region's multilingual heritage. In addition to highlighting German's significance as a language of regional communication, the article reveals the importance of cross-border contacts and the significance of light entertainment in Cold War central Europe. Rather than separating listeners out by citizenship, foreign radio listening fostered solidarities that cut across national boundaries and divided people by generation, geography, class, and technical dexterity instead.

Foreign powers will use media for Balkan influence

Significance Western media have been present in the Balkans for decades through the likes of the BBC and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Large media corporations in Russia, China and Turkey are also looking to expand, in a region where the information sphere is still largely underdeveloped. Impacts Hungarian media investments in Slovenia and North Macedonia appear to be profit-making although their content reflects Fidesz’s values. Privately owned media can be financially robust although owners sometimes threaten editorial independence. Media with a state-backed agenda are unlikely to encourage the investigative journalism that calls power to account.

Competing propagandas: How the United States and Russia represent mutual propaganda activities

The period of growing tensions between the United States and Russia (2013–2019) saw mutual accusations of digital interference, disinformation, fake news, and propaganda, particularly following the Ukraine crisis and the 2016 US presidential election. This article asks how the United States and Russia represent each other’s and their own propaganda, its threat, and power over audiences. We examine these representations in US and Russian policy documents and online articles from public diplomacy media Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and RT. The way propaganda is framed, (de)legitimized, and securitized has important implications for public understanding of crises, policy responses, and future diplomacy. We demonstrate how propaganda threats have become a major part of the discourse about the US–Russia relationship in recent years, prioritizing state-centred responses and disempowering audiences.

Tematyka olimpijska w audycjach Rozgłośni Polskiej Radia Wolna Europa

The author presents the Olympic theme in Polish broadcasts of Radio Free Europe, which was one of the main media of the information war during the Cold War. Did the policy influence the content of these programmes? The answer to this question is in the negative. The Olympic Games on Radio Free Europe were presented in a professional manner. Journalists knew sports and sporting competition was the most important for them. Political content in programmes about Olympic competitions was avoided.

I AM THEREFORE ASKING YOU TO STOP WORKING ON THE MUSEUM. STANISŁAW SANKOWSKI’S WAY TO ESTABLISHING A MUSEUM IN RADOMSKO

In 2020, we are celebrating 50 years of the Stanisław Sankowski Museum in Radomsko, officially established on 1 July 1970. However, it was already from 1946 that Stanisław Sankowski, a history teacher, had been collecting documents and exhibits related to the region among the students of the First Secondary School in Radomsko. He appealed for them to be collected in the school newsletter and in 1958 in the ‘Gazeta Radomszczańska’ paper. The appeal was successful, and the collections started to grow. At that point there was no mention of a seat for the Museum, so initially, as approved by the school Headmaster, the Museum was housed in the school building. It seemed that it would find a home there for longer, particularly as the school was given a new building. When it turned out there was no separate room available for the exhibition, the school hall was adapted for the Museum exhibits. This, however, was not to the liking of the school authorities; the Deputy Headmaster, who, interestingly, happened to be a historian himself, forbid the works to be continued. For some time the Museum’s activity was suspended, yet finally S. Sankowski decided to move the collected exhibits to his own flat. Excursions, even from around the country, were invited to visit it. Meanwhile, S. Sankowski continuously tried to be allocated some facility where the Museum could be housed. The efforts were accelerated by the mention of the Radomsko Museum in a private flat in a programme on Radio Free Europe. Soon afterwards, the home for the Museum was found: initially, they were 3 rooms in the building of the town authorities, later the whole ground floor, while in the mid-1970s it was allocated almost the whole building of the former 1859 Town Hall. The Museum had enjoyed first successes even before the formal establishment; these were undoubtedly the finds that brought archaeologists to Radomsko and their subsequent discoveries. What needs to be appreciated, though, i s f i rst a n d fo rem o st t h e ed u cat i o n a l effo r t o f S. Sankowski and his promoting activities. Many years later, in 2008, the Radomsko Regional Museum was named after its instigator and creator.

Environmental Journalism? Radio Free Europe, Charter 77 and the Making of an Environmental Agenda

The primary aim of this paper is to outline concisely the history of environmental journalism in Czechoslovakia and to compare it to the development of Radio Free Europe’s environmental agenda. This comparison can help us better understand how important a role society – and by extension social constructivism – played in twentieth-century environmental history. An explanation for these discrepancies can, in my opinion, be found not only in the internal discussions at RFE and among dissidents but also in the international context. Upon greater scrutiny, the simple question of why and how RFE’s environmental agenda emerged, and why certain environmental topics but not others were covered in RFE’s broadcasts and reports, appears to be multi-layered, and, if we attempt to answer it, can reveal how and why environmental issues become socially and politically relevant.

FUNCTIONAL VARIABILITY OF THE REVIEW GENRE IN MODERN UKRAINIAN MEDIA COMMUNICATION

The article is devoted to the linguistic and stylistic solution to research problems of communicative variance of the review genre in modern Ukrainian mass media. The author's provability is based on the contrast of the chosen methodology of medialinguistic analysis and the already formed tradition in the social and communicative scientific paradigm. It allows to realize a comprehensive, syncretic investigation of the functional, context-oriented nature of the review. Medialinguistic analysis of the review genre is based on current illustrative material from authoritative in Ukraine media resources (Voice of America, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, BBC) that were interpreted using stylistic and quantitative methodology. It helps to indicate the permanent evolution of the review model: architectonics, system of language units and most importantly – functions. There is a tendency for the review to be more informative, and its analytical nature is defined as an additional functional component a priori. Thus, the idea of the review hypergenre status, alternatively realized in the style of mass media communication, is argued in connection with its extralinguistically motivated tasks and priorities. Such peculiarity of the review genre helps to determine the prospects of its research analysis, especially nowadays, in linguistic and cultural discourse that deepens the medialinguistic and genre subjectivity of the professional interpretation of modern mass media communication.