Perceptions of Media Roles in Serbia and Croatia: Does News Orientation Have an Impact?

The origins of media trust in a young democracy

“…Our findings suggest that certain aspects of media performance -such as providing political analysis, monitoring political power, and serving as a public forum-are particularly important as the sources of public trust in news media. This is in line with previous research finding that journalism students in Serbia place a high value on journalistic roles which embody these crucial democratic functions (Pjesivac & Imre, 2019). In comparison, perceptions of the disseminator role performance were found to be less predictive of media trust and only marginally significant.…”

“…The disseminator role describes the most basic democratic task of the news media-to provide relevant political information to citizens in order to assist them in making informed decisions in a neutral and objective manner. Recent studies have found a preference for objective journalism among the general public and journalism students in Serbia (Pjesivac et al, 2016;Pjesivac & Imre, 2019). The association of this kind of reporting with media trust (worthiness) has been shown by studies in different political contexts (Cozzens & Contractor, 1987;Livio & Cohen, 2018).…”

“…The interpretive or investigative role corresponds to the "watchdog" position of news media, which may serve as an external control mechanism that monitors those in power. The importance of this aspect of journalism was found to be relatively salient among the Serbian journalism students (Pjesivac & Imre, 2019), which might be indicative of the general public's attitudes as well. However, previous research does not offer clear evidence for the association of this role with media trust.…”

“…Further, Fawzi (2019) has found the anti-elitism dimension of populist attitudes to be a negative predictor of trust in both quality and tabloid media in Germany. As noted above, the Serbian media have been considered a part of the state apparatus during the non-democratic regimes and continued to struggle with establishing independence after the democratic transition had started (Pjesivac & Imre, 2019;Rupar et al, 2019). For this reason, many citizens might still consider the media a part of the corrupt establishment which is working against the true interest of the people.…”

Pretpostavke za razumijevanje uloge medijskog sustava za deliberativnu demokraciju

“…Nedavna studija Vozab i Majstorović (2021) pokazala je da je medijski senzacionalizam jedna od najistraživanijih tema o novinarstvu u Hrvatskoj, a akademski projekt The Worlds of Journalism da se i sami novinari suočavaju s pritiscima u smjeru senzacionalističkog izvještavanja (Peruško, Čuvalo i Vozab, 2016). Novinarska etika uglavnom se analizirala kroz analizu sadržaja i vrednovanje etički dvojbenih praksi u medijima (Majstorović, 2013;Pavelin i Karamarko, 2015), a privrženost različitim ulogama, normama i etici otkrivena je i među samim novinarima (Ivanuš, 2021;Peruško, Čuvalo i Vozab, 2016;Pjesivac i Imre, 2018). 6…”