The Iron Curtain in the Memory of the Serbian Newsprint Media

Digital transformation of journalism and media in Serbia: What has gone wrong?

“…Academic research sometimes looks at the changes of professional roles and the development of digital journalism in the Serbian context in a pessimistic way, describing Internet more as "the most serious threat" than "the biggest companion of the press" (Bajić, 2012). Also, studies examining digital content creation and the integration of citizen and participatory journalism often focus on attitudes of traditional journalists about these forms and question how well these concepts have been accepted by professionals working in traditional media settings or how traditional journalists interact with audiences as content creators using various digital platforms (Milojević and Ugrinić, 2011;Petrović, 2019).…”

“…Editors often highlight the differences between professional and participatory/ citizen journalism, considering professional journalism performed by educated journalists as the only real journalism there is (Krstić, 2012). Moreover, there has been a clear polarization between the media outlets in the country which simply ignore citizens as media content creators and those recognizing citizens only as sources of information (Milojević and Ugrinić, 2011). Recent local media studies (Petrović, 2019;Krstić, 2022) reveal that editors and owners of small local media outlets in Serbia, both traditional and online, recognize digital practices usually through sending emails to interviewees, or as a daily use of social media to communicate with citizens or receiving photos, videos or topic suggestions from their publics.…”

“…They quickly turned their nationalistic politics into the pro-EU orientation and partnered with the Socialist Party of Serbia, once led by Slobodan Milošević, to form the new government. This ongoing period has shown considerable decline of press freedom, slow media law enforcement, severe political pressures, marginalization of quality and investigative journalism, political instrumentalization of media, controlled advertising market, numerous judicial proceedings against journalists and overall economic insecurity of media across the country (Freedom House, 2022;Milojević and Ugrinić, 2011;IREX, 2019;Matić, 2012). As of recently, Serbia has been downgraded from flawed democracy to a partially free country, with the worst assessments regarding media freedom, political and civil liberties and constant pressures on political opposition and civil society organizations (Freedom House, 2021).…”