Karmen Erjavec

Media Representation of the Discrimination against the Roma in Eastern Europe: The Case of Slovenia

The aim of this article is to show how the thematic and form structures of the news report work to legitimate and naturalize discrimination against the Roma. The syntactic structure of discriminatory discourse offered the readers categories which differed very little: the headline and the lead constructed a closed interpretation of the situation and the rest of the news report strengthened, legitimated and naturalized this interpretation especially with its use of evaluation. In order to create a coherent meaning of the news text, journalists first reduced the definition of the situation to only one event, which presented the majority population in a positive light. To construct only one, natural dominant interpretation of the ethnic discrimination they selectively (mis)used information, used discourse of difference with colonization of common-sense language, and the strategies of denial of discriminatory discourse. The majority population was the dominant group, responsible for the process of doing and saying as actors and sayers. The study of the Slovenia media adheres to the analytic paradigm of critical discourse analysis (CDA).

Beyond Advertising and Journalism: Hybrid Promotional News Discourse:

The aim of this article is to show the usefulness of an expanded version of Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis approach, i.e. an approach that combines text analysis with an analysis of discourse processes in studying text production and interpretation, and also incorporates ethnographic methods, in this case, participant observation and interviews. This expanded approach was checked in the study of illegal promotional news discourse; the study was conducted chronologically in two stages. In the first stage, an analysis of interpractice—which identifies cases in which specific other practices of the process of text production and interpretation are overtly drawn upon within a practice—was used to identify promotional news reports and uncover elements of promotional practice which are drawn upon within journalism, such as having the advertiser, who realizes his/her commercial interest by paying for publishing or killing a certain story, as the key actor in the process of promotional news production. In the second stage, analysis of interdiscursivity revealed how promotional journalism through textual devices (genre, topics, perspective, choice of sources, lexical choice, over-lexicalization, coherence, choice of processes and participants) incorporates discursive elements of promotion which are drawn upon within the news report discourse, such as using representatives of the organization as almost the only participants, partiality, positive-only evaluation of the characteristics/activities of the subject discussed, which is in the interest of those discussed by the texts and not the readers.

‘War on terrorism’ as a discursive battleground: Serbian recontextualization of G.W. Bush's discourse

In different parts of the world the 9/11 terrorist attacks have been localized and negotiated by mainstream media and in other public discourses in rather diverse ways. This article explores how young Serbian intellectuals recontextualized G.W. Bushs ‘war on terrorism’ discourse in order to legitimize, retroactively, Serbian violence against Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo during the 1990s. We go beyond Bernsteins concept of recontextualization, defined as representation of social events, and extend it to the notion of relocation of a discourse from its original context/practice to its appropriation within another context/practice. Our analysis shows that the informants recycle and appropriate the discourse of ‘the war on terrorism’ by using an analogy. They equate the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon with the former Yugoslav wars and they position and represent former Yugoslav Muslims as terrorists. Our informants continue to use the same principle of exclusion, celebrated by the US administration, extending the group of the ‘good’ (‘we’) to cover all ‘Western/European/Christians’, including the Serbs. The ‘evil’ (‘other’) group is represented as the ‘they’ group, encompassing all the ‘non-Western/non-European/non-Christian/Muslims’. Informants also appropriate the discourse by extending the meaning of the word ‘terrorism’ to all the violent acts carried out by Muslims regardless of the specificities of different politicalhistorical contexts.

Hybrid Public Relations News Discourse

The aim of this article is twofold: to integrate an analysis of discourse processes into Fairclough’s textually orientated critical discourse analysis, and to show the usefulness of this approach in demonstrating the encroachment of public relations on news production in Slovenia. Interpractice analysis – which identifies cases where text production and interpretation processes overtly use practices outside the convention – was used to identify so-called ‘public relations news reports’ and uncover the elements of public relations practice used in journalism. The analysis of interdiscursivity revealed how hybrid practice, through textual devices (i.e. topics, perspective, choice of sources, genre and lexis), incorporates discursive elements of public relations into news report discourse. These include using the representatives of an organization as the main source, partiality and a one-sided (favourable) evaluation of the characteristics/activities of the subject discussed; none of which are in the interest of the audience, but in the interest of the powerful elite that the news covers.

Relations with the media: Who are the main actors in an advertorial production process in Slovenia?

The aim of this article is to reveal the production process behind unethical and illegal advertorials — to uncover its main actors, their motives, and responses to this practice. The study combines participant observation and interviews with the main participants in the production of texts which appear in an identical form to journalistic text, yet are commercial messages. The analysis showed that the key actors are advertisers, as they are the initiators of the practice; they define the content and the form of publication to achieve commercial benefit. Both marketing agents and journalists/editors are more or less subordinate to them at all stages of the production. The analysis also revealed that relations between the main actors in the advertorial production process are predominately negative, even antagonistic, although members of a specific group, especially journalists and editors, do not share a homogenous view towards other actors or the advertorial practice itself.

MOBI JOURNALISM IN SLOVENIA

The practice of so-called mobi journalism at a commercial television station, which has been promoting itself as the first case of citizen journalism in Slovenia, is explored by text analysis combined with an analysis of discourse processes using ethnographic methods. The article examines whether the television station actually follows the purposes of this model of audience participation. The analysis reveals that it is, in fact, a market-driven quasi-citizen journalism practice, abusing the term “citizen journalism” and exploiting new media technologies for commercial purposes. In the news published on the website and in the television programme, it is the media producers who covertly make key decisions, defining the content and the structure of the news; while the audience members’ activity is reduced to “spying” (searching for and taking photos of alleged offences or irregularities by lower public officials) and denunciating (sending such photos to a television station). The success of this practice results from an unusual connection between the past socialist and contemporary profits-oriented journalistic practices and behaviour patterns.

A Discursive Approach to Genre Mobi News

■ This article argues that genres are discursive categories that move beyond the boundaries of media texts and operate within industry, audience and social practices as well. It demonstrates the usefulness of an expanded genre analysis. The genre chain of mobi news, which relies on the use of mobile telephone cameras and is a popular genre in Slovenian and Balkan media, is explored by combining text analysis with an analysis of discourse practice and social practice. Mobi news items are produced as a denunciatory participatory practice in which audience participation is managed by the production team: journalists define the content and the structure of the news while the audiences activity is reduced to spying and denunciating. ■

The Kosovo Battle: Media's Recontextualization of the Serbian Nationalistic Discourses

In 2006, the international community started to finalize the political status of Kosovo, the Serbian province, inhabited mostly by the Muslim Albanian majority. At the end of October 2006, a referendum was held in Serbia, where a new constitution was passed that claims Kosovo as an integral part of Serbia. What has taken place in the so-called “last media battle for Kosovo”? This article investigates discourses of the two most popular Serbian newspapers and their coverage of the October 2006 events. The analysis of recontextualization shows that the newspapers continuously reproduce the dominant Serbian nationalism that focuses on a myth of a Greater Serbia. With an appropriation of different discourses, the dominant Serbian nationalism becomes legitimized and justified. In particular, the newspapers reproduce distinctive religious discourses from the political past, and furthermore, they borrow so-called European, “war on terrorism” and “crime” discourses from the international mainstream public spheres and appropriate them to the contemporary Serbian political context. Generally, the newspapers reappropriate different discourses by framing the Serbs as the victims of their own local “perpetrators,” the Kosovo Albanians.

Mapping the Notion of “Terrorism” in Serbian and Croatian Newspapers:

The September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States have reconfigured the global public debates as of how to defend a “civilized” world from the “Islamic terrorism.” The U.S.-led war on terror against extremist groups also produced and triggered a particular discourse in the former Yugoslav countries. The main aim of this article is to present an example of a study that explores how media appropriate dominant global antiterrorism discourse and apply it to a local context to legitimize and justify specific ideologies and discourse. As our critical discourse analysis shows, Serbian and Croatian newspapers apply the global discourse of terrorism to their local context to excuse their nationalisms and the past military actions against the Muslims in former Yugoslav wars, and with that, they assert their belonging to an antiterrorism global discursive community.

Rehabilitating Milošević: Posthumous coverage of the Milošević regime in Serbian newspapers

This article analyses the medias coverage of Slobodan Miloševićs death with an aim to uncover how media further use and incorporate social events into nationalistic discourses and, in that, reconstruct the myth of a legendary leader. The critical discoursive analysis shows that one of the most popular Serbian newspapers Večernje novosti recontextualized Miloševićs death in accordance with the nationalistic media discourse that dominated his regime (1987–2000) and in that further reproduced the Serbian myth of Milošević as a legendary leader.