Baltic democracies beyond the EU accession: media as a bearer of democratic culture and means of resilience in navigating uncertainties

Two decades after the 2004 enlargement of the European Union, the three small nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have emerged as a steadfast and resilient Baltic political, cultural, and geographic region. Influenced by the political and economic liberalization of the early 1990s, the small nations have undergone significant systemic re-structuring and transformations, accompanied by socio-cultural volatility and contemporary vulnerabilities such as escalating inequalities, signs of populism and polarization, and indications of social discontent standing out amongst the most emblematic ones. Adopting a 'process-focused' approach, this paper aims to depict how democratic institutions in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, with a specific emphasis on conventional news media, aspire to uphold distinctive characteristics of a shared democratic culture amidst intensified information disruptions, including the surge of online disinformation, information manipulations and a decline in institutional trust. It presents evidence based on the two pillars of what is referred to as the so-called 'Baltic resilience': the media's institutional position and the agentive aspect, which refers to the public's self-efficacy and perceptions, emergent to counter manifold 'inforuptions' in the Baltic region.