Mediating class in a classless society? Media and social inequalities in socialist Eastern Europe

It is tempting to assume that state socialist media abounded with idealised depictions of working-class citizens. Yet, while workers were indeed glorified in official rhetoric, popular media offered a rather different picture. Drawing on the analysis of television fiction from five state socialist countries, this chapter shows that miners, farmers and factory workers were often overshadowed by engineers, lawyers and public officials whose tastes, habits and aspirations appeared remarkably ‘middle class’. Such patterns of representation were rooted in persistent forms of social inequality that privileged the socialist ‘middle classes’ over citizens in blue-collar occupations.