Young TV viewers in Poland after 1989 and their participation in the audiovisual media culture

Abstract

This article is an attempt to capture the reality of young TV viewers and the complexity of their participation in audiovisual media culture during the political transformation in Poland after 1989. Qualitative research (interviews and spoken stories) conducted on a group of thirty-year-old men whose period of early adolescence occurred in the nineties is the base for these deliberations. Respondents asked about their participation in the audiovisual media culture in the first half of the nineties talked about their first experiences with VHS cassettes, cinema and the so-called culture fansite. The aim is to identify what impact the aesthetics of the nineties – as well as an attempt to “catch up with the world” after 1989 – had on the daily lives of the subjects.