Democratization of communication as a utopia

Abstract

This article is a case-study of the Finnish radio reform in the middle of the 1980's which resulted in the introduction of commercial radio in the country after 50 years of public monopoly. The study considers the radio reform as a discursive formation and focuses on a specific form of utopian discourse which is termed as democratization of communication. The author links his analysis of utopian discourse with Mannheim's classic sociology of knowledge and adopts from him the idea of the concreteness of utopias, i.e. the emphasis on situationality and social conditioning of utopias. What makes utopian discourse a relevant object of study, according to the author, is the way the utopias and utopians challenge the taken for granted character of a given social order, reproduced and maintained, for instance, by the practices of everyday knowledge. As to the discursive construction of the Finnish radio reform, the author's main conclusion is that the democratic utopia of communication was used to break the historical dichotomy between public and commercial broadcasting. Only the re-articulation of this dichotomy made it possible for the advocates of deregulation to gain wide popular and political support for their intentions.