Agency, awakening, and the audiovisual: Developments in lateSoviet Latvian Broadcasting

This study explores developments in Latvian broadcast media during the period known as the “awakening” that led up to the re-establishment of independence. It pays particular attention to the celebrated television program Labvakar (Good Evening). It argues that pre-existing patterns of political communication persisted through the period showing that while media practices and content were the product of social agency emanating from an elite group of intelligentsia and politicians, broadcasting was less successful at generating social agency at the grassroots, a precondition for and ideal of effective civic and public service communication.