Media is very powerful in Lithuania just being a watchdog for official power holders – state authorities. People trust them most, so media is able to use this trust in defining what is good and what is bad in society. Some speculations are present, but Lithuanian press, radio, TV and Internet do a lot to promote so called information society which is essential for a civil society: the main goal of contemporary democracy. How has media been developing and why it is so important in shaping the society?

Mass media plays a great role in contemporary information society. Not only because of creating and representing the image of identity of various social groups, but also in information interchange and in every day communications among postmodern minded people. In Western civilization life without Internet, mobile phone, TV and e-mail is unimaginable, but information society is only in the stage of creation in developing countries.

The information society is based on high-tech technologies, which are comparatively expensive, and poor countries simply cannot afford to introduce some innovations to their society. Then there is little information available about newest information technological achievements and this is the main reason why Internet, mobile phones industries etc. are not developing very quickly even though there is a need. Let’s take Lithuania as an example.

Due to historical situation, the dawn of information technologies, which began in the West, was simply blocked by soviet regime. Digital communication was used only for military and scientific purposes with great restriction, because it was ideologically unusable to give the access for common users to broader world where they could probably have found the democracy and liberalism ideas, which were deadly for a Communist regime. So everything was kept in secret.

In the end of 1980’s the liberalization of media began. There were no any significant economical changes, but the spirit of wider freedom was somewhere around. 1987-1991 the national awakening begun, when the ecological movements grew to political ones with the ideas of independence or at least granting more freedom to some Soviet Union countries. The liberation ideas were mainly supported by media, which later on played a crucial role in creating democracy not only in the Baltics, but also in other former Soviet Union countries. The unification of political goals towards freedom with media in the leading position lasted until Lithuania officially declared independence in 1990. In 1991 the main aggression from Soviet Union in order to keep Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia was towards media: Russian troops attacked the TV tower in January 13th 1991 in Vilnius. 13 people were killed there trying bare handed to keep the Russian tanks and to defend the main broadcasting institution. Later the Press House was also taken by Russian military, but Lithuanian media kept on expressing democratic ideas in underground conditions. In this period the political forces (democratic) and media kept in step with each other because general ideas of liberation were the same. This lasted until the elections in 1991 during which political forces were divided. Different parties and political movements appeared and media step by step began to keep aside from politics and political disagreements among parties. Privatization and modernization of Lithuanian mass media began. Private or foreign investors and capital established a lot of independent newspapers, magazines, and several TV and radio stations. Then the newest information technologies were introduced. Media also became the watchdog of power holders.

When the country is young, the government and society is still old minded, except small group of people who has revolutionary ideas. The Lithuanian Parliament and the Government were and still are full of people, who were in the power during the soviet period, too. The quick change of ideology did not convince media and society that these people will change something in order to create the democracy in the country. This kind of distrust was and still is very important in contemporary Lithuanian media, which is criticizing the authorities, showing their mistakes and crimes. This is the main reason why society trusts media mostly among all the institutions. In fact mass media always share first or the second place in surveys about trust with Church.

Such role of mass media allows to shape the society according to the market, because the main institution, which defines the things as identity, who is included into society and who is not, political preferences and problems of society etc. is media, not the state authorities in comparison with old democratic Western countries. This could be a big advantage of introducing and leading Lithuanians towards a civil and information society, but there are economical problems.

The computers, mobile phones now are usual things used at work or in daily life. 5 years ago it was like miracle simply because the lack of information on where high-tech technologies could be used. Now the work in a simple office cannot be imagined without computer, Internet and e-mail, not speaking about mobile phones. A few years ago people didn’t consider them useful at all, more things of unnecessary luxury, but definitely not things of need. Today more than 10% of Lithuanian population (do not forget that about 33% of population are retired and old people) is using mobile phones; more than half of million people (the all population of Lithuania is approximately 3,6 million) use Internet and e-mail. The Government and political parties introduce various programs which will help to integrate the bigger part of society to the information networks by providing all secondary schools with computers and access to Internet, promoting telecommunication companies (now there are three mobile communication providing companies, so fair competition can be useful for further development of telecommunications), assisting the IT education etc. Recently the laws concerning electronic signature and e-business were passed in order to make Lithuanian market competitive in so called “24 hours economy“.

Something has been already done regarding information society, but no one can demand the small developing country with 10 years of democracy to have the same information technology as in Western Europe, America and some Asian countries. People must be educated or reeducated in order to increase the number of people who understand the need of information society in order to strengthen democracy and create the civil society, which now is really weak. The role of media of Lithuania will be huge, because this institution has to convince population that democracy is toughly tied with freedom of exchange of information.