MEDIA AND CITIZENSHIP

Abstract

The concept of citizenship has been changeable since the beginning of organised society. However, in the last decades, this variation has increased at a hallucinatory rate in response to the new demands of the contemporary world. Political and economic globalisation, the destruction of frontiers in the dissemination of cultures and the explosion of information in the world, establish new conditions for achieving full citizenship. Today, we relate to the determinism of consumption as a way of affirming rights and victories of citizenship, besides conforming ourselves with the phenomenon of individualism as a determinant of social actors' relationships and roles. The media appear, in this context, as a mediator capable of sustaining the structure, which legitimates a citizenship and serves these new demands independent of the question of the rights of full citizenship.