Media Control And Regime Change

Regime change has always been one of the hot topics in contemporary political studies.The Color Revolution in the Post-soviet state was an important part of ‘The third wave'.The Color Revolutions usually occur during presidential or parliamentary elections,with mass street politics as the main force,it has the character of political opportunity as a social movement.In this case,how the United States disseminated democracy and how the opposition instigated large-scale mass movement become the key to the Color Revolution.In this context,the role of the media in the Color Revolution is particularly prominent.This paper selects Georgia,Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan as positive cases,found that invalid media control lead to the collapse of the regime.Kazakhstan and Belarus were cited as counter-examples to prove that effective media control was the key to regime consolidation in social movements.It is found that the Color Revolution countries all have deep social crisis,and these political crises come from the state structure of post-soviet countries which is inconsistent with their own situation and the imbalanced international system.They generally follow this pattern: One-party rule for a long time resulted in a situation of "Strong President and Weak Parliament";A multi-party system that nurtures large numbers of opposition;Political corruption forms ‘the dumbbell' social structure;The lack of access to political participation has led to massive street protests;Finally,the media instigated mass social movements.In the process,the government handled thepolitical scandal to gain the confidence of the voters,and the opposition discredits the government and mobilizes the people,Or the foreign powers promote western democracy and stir up popular discontent,can not do without the control of the media,the direction of information and public opinion control.Although the media of Color Revolution countries are different and have their own characteristics,there are some commonalities in this social movement.According to different organizations or forces that control the media,we divide the media into three types: the official media,the opposition media and the independent media.Among all these media,the political mobilization capacity of non-state media and strong independent funding are key to the success of social movements.What really turned the public's dissatisfaction with the current government from "quantitative change" to "qualitative change" was the political corruption exposed by the opposition media funded by foreign forces and the street political activities.The opposition and outside forces have skilfully used the media to stir up a national crisis of confidence and the student movement to inspire mass street politics.On the contrary,the official media controlled by the authoritarian government did not well,and even get out of control and turned against the state.However,independent media make full use of the diffusion effect of democratization,so that every successful democratic revolution will have an impact on the color revolution countries,and then collapse the originally consolidated regime.The study found that authoritarian governments were very open to press freedom,inadvertently laying the groundwork for their own downfall.The lack of control over foreign-funded independent media made the ruling party lose its position in the Color Revolution.The lack of control over access to information prevents the ruling government from properly and timely responding to opposition street politics.Therefore,the authoritarian government should strengthen the media monitoring in the national construction,and focus on cultivating the national consciousness to replace 'the liberal democracy'.