Television discussion and the public sphere: conflicting discourses of the former Yugoslavia

Using a case study approach, a television studio debate on events in the former Yugoslavia is analyzed. In the program, an audience of “ordinary” Serbs and Croats met with expert or elite representatives of these groups to discuss their country's future. The analysis focuses on the rules and roles for public discussion that are established and managed by the program. This is important in the context of the broader question of the media's potential to contribute to or undermine the public sphere. Debates over the public sphere center on a contrast between the Habermasian bourgeois public sphere and the oppositional public sphere. It is argued that programs that involve the active participation of a lay studio audience come closer to the requirements of the latter than the former, although audiences and their observers remain ambivalent about this role. By analyzing the access and identities of participants, the role and treatment of different categories of participant (host, expert versus lay, men versus women), and the diversity and organization of claims made during the argument, some of the conditions under which the media may promote public discussion are explored.