Historically, the role of journalism in society is bound to the prevailing conceptualization of the freedom of the press, specific societal, institutional, and material conditions of news production. This study explores self-perceptions of journalists working in the period of socialist Yugoslavia and synthetizes their recollections of journalistic orientations and performances with respect to journalism’s place in society. The study is based on the oral history interviews with former journalists, who worked also as editors and foreign correspondents from late 1950s to 1990s at the news agency Tanjug, which was considered the information backbone of the federal media system in Yugoslavia and had considerable international relevance. By combining ‘journalistic roles’ studies as well as ‘occupational life history’ research this historical study makes twofold contribution. First, it identifies adaptive strategies of remembering used by the interviewed journalists to legitimize themselves as professionals and relevant interpreters of SFRY journalism. Second, it reveals more nuances within common, often simplified understandings of journalists as collaborators with power during socialism, and highlights roles of privileged disseminator, monitoring analyst, and educator as specific manifestations of collaborative function of journalism.
The recent European refugee crisis, which began in 2015, has generated academic interest in how media portray and frame migrations and refugees, specifically in their influence on how “We” perceive and accept “Them” in “Our” societies. However, research primarily focuses on EU member states and destination/receiving countries. Therefore, our study examines media framing of the refugee crisis in Serbia between 2015 and 2016. Building on frames previously identified in the Western context, we pre-defined three frames: viewing the refugee crisis as a problem for the political system, society, or refugees. These frames were coded as external/internal based on whether the media text discussed the crisis outside/inside Serbia. Our deductive análisis shows that framing differs from destination countries, with a minimal emphasis on social problems in Serbia. Political issues and challenges faced by refugees were dominant but externalized, showing a slight decline over time compared to the social problem frame, which followed real events. Furthermore, our inductive thematic analysis reveals a new way of framing refugees as a problema for the free movement of our citizens. It also reveals a meta-frame of “Us” (in Serbia) as acting in a humanitarian manner amid hard circumstances created by “Them” (Western politicians) who are not handling the crisis in line with the EU values.
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