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While on the European path, Vucic creates the pro-Russian narrative in Serbia

Putin Vucic
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What makes Serbia interesting to anaylze when it comes to Russia's influence is the already formed pro-Russian public opinion. Therefore, the question arises whether Russia in Serbia has a need to invest in strengthening its influence when public opinion is already in its favor. It is enough to look at the cover pages of the Serbian daily press where you can often see Vladimir Putin, as well as the media reporting on Russia so you can get the impression that the pro-Russian narrative is possibly created by Serbian journalists and editors. It means that pro-Russian narrative is not sponsored or created by Kremlin. One of the main findings of the research I have conducted in 2019 shows the role of the executive power and Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic in the creation of a pro-russian narrative in Serbian dailies.

A Russian bridgehead to the Western Balkans, with Belgrade’s blessing

In the last few years, the international community has been intensely alerting on the expansion and strengthening of Russian influence in Western Balkans, especially in the countries that are in the accession negotiation process for the EU membership. In this way, Russia demonstrates its power, although it is aware that this region geographically belongs to Europe, while economically depends largely on the European Union itself. The impression is that Russia’s only option is to act in an obstructionist manner to undermine the EU and NATO according to political scientist Dimitar Bechev. The case of Serbia is particularly interesting considering religious, historical and traditional ties with Russia, which sees Belgrade as its most important political partner in this region from where it can further project its influence.

In order to find out how the daily press reports on Russia and Serbian-Russian relations, I have analyzed over 200 newspaper articles using quantitative and qualitative content analysis. At the same time, I also analyzed the reporting of Sputnik Serbian service web-portal in order to compare Serbian daily newspapers (Politika, Kurir, Vecernje Novosti, Blic, Informer) and Russian Sputnik. After doing content analysis, I spoke to 15 journalists and editors of Serbian daily newspapers, as well as with former correspondents from Brussels and Moscow. In a conversation with them, I tried to learn more about the pressures they are facing, their views on Russia and the European Union, as well as the way pro-Russian narrative is created.

Regarding political and financial pressures reported by international organizations, 12 out of 15 interviewed journalists claim that there is censorship and self-censorship both in their newspapers and in general in Serbia.  Some of them feel that there is even no need for political pressure anymore because the created atmosphere suggests what is allowed and what is not. Additionally, financials are also influenced by the way of reporting, as one journalist pointed out „it all depends on advertisers who will be warned not to advertise in a newspaper that is critical of the authorities“. An even bigger problem is that the state continues to play an important role in the Serbian media market as well as giving tax payers money to media who favors the government.

* The countries surveyed were scored between 0 and 100, with 0 being the best possible result and 100 the worst

When it comes to the reporting of the Serbian daily press, it is superficial, factual and it is reduced to the transmission of official statements and statements by politicians without any deeper analysis of the events. Although much about Russia is written in the daily press of Serbia, the Serbian public knows very little about Russia. Russia and its relations with Serbia are described uncritically, and the media is more interested about the way that the Serbian ruling elites want this relationship to look than about the true extent of the Serbian-Russian cooperation.

In order to evaluate the style of the text about the domestic press when reporting on Russia, I used several variables, the most important of which was the degree of sensationalism, emotionality, bias, and polarization in reporting. Among the analyzed newspapers, the most sensationalistic texts are in the pro-regime tabloid Informer, and the least in the newspapers Blic and Politika. Two extremely striking titles and texts painted with sensationalism were "Give millions to throw off Putin" (Informer, February 20, 2018) and "Putin's beasts arrive in Serbia" (Kurir, April 4, 2018). 

In regard to the reporting style, sensationalism appears in 76% of daily Informer articles, while only 14.8% of the articles are marked as sensational on Russian web-portal Sputnik (Serbian service). There are several possible reasons for such a difference, and one of them may be commercial. Since Sputnik is a Russian government funded news agency and does not depend in the first place on the market, then there is no particular need for the sensational titles to attract audiences, which is not the case with the tabloid Informer. However, this newspaper is known for its sensationalism, especially when it reports on Russia or Russian President Vladimir Putin. A telling sign of Informer’s pro-Russian attitude is the fact that in their editorial office you can find on the walls pictures of Vladimir Putin. The pro-Russian tabloid also has very close ties to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic. The question that arises from that is whether such a pro-Russian narrative in this paper was created by the Serbian president.

The pro-Russian narrative is Vucic’s way to appease his Russophile electoral base

*https://globalvoices.org/2020/02/07/how-russia-influences-serbian-media/

I have already mentioned that the Serbian press has a non-critical attitude towards Russia which is best illustrated by the fact that Russia did not appear in a negative context in any of the analyzed texts. If we look at the number of positive texts about Russia, it is dominated by Informer tabloid (68.4%) and Kurir (68.2%), as well as the daily Večernje novosti (60%), which is significantly higher number than on the Sputnik portal (45.7%).

*RTS is a Serbian National Broadcaster (https://globalvoices.org/2020/02/07/how-russia-influences-serbian-media/)

In addition to quantitative data, it is interesting to observe the attributes and words with the emotional potential used in describing the Serbian-Russian relations. The finding I came to is that the Serbian press incomparably uses (42 times) words such as fraternity, friendship, tradition and closeness than the Russian Sputnik (6) does. On the basis of this, it can be concluded that the editors use these words to try to further emphasize the relationship between Serbia and Russia, trying to present this relationship more as their desire than the reality.

Journalists I talked to aknowledge that they are facing pressures. One TV journalist told me that the key influence on the media comes from the very top of the rulling party. As far as real, direct Russian leverage on the media is concerned, she believes that Russia would not even be able to advertise a topic which is in contradiction the to politics of those who control the media in Serbia. Another tabloid editor claims that he is almost sure that the Russians do not have influence over Informer, which is strongly associated with a pro-Russian editorial policy.

Several journalists told me that the story of Russian influence is overrated, and that it’s more a case of russophilia than of real Kremlin’s influence. A foreign policy journalist believes that even the reporting of daily press is more about Vladimir Putin than about Russia. A few editors explain this as a way to sell newspapers: when you’ve got Putin on the front page, people are buying.

Why is the daily press reporting on Russia as if we are going to enter a community with Russian Federation tomorrow, when in fact Serbia is on its European path? One of the reasons can be found in public dissatisfaction with Western policy towards Serbia while Russia is presented as an alternative. Moreover, Russia did not bomb Serbia and it gives support on Kosovo issue. Nevertheless, a former correspondent in Moscow believes that the Serbian press writes fake news about Serbian-Russian relations, and made an interesting point: in Serbian press it is impossible to see Vladimir Putin’s statements next to the ones made by Vucic.

However, the question that arises is how big is the role of the Serbian authorities in creating and encouraging pro-Russian narratives in the daily press. One of the journalists pointed out that when it comes to the attitude of the authorities towards Russia, Vucic tries to satisfy his pro-Russian nationalist electorate through the media. The former correspondent in Brussels sees two major influences when we talk about Russia, one of which goes through Sputnik, and the other one coming from the ruling political party which  promotes rusophilia in daily press.

An interesting interpretation comes from the editor of a Russian portal in Serbia who thinks that there is no pressure from the Russian side or any efforts to persuade someone to write well about it. Several journalists I talked to pointed out that the pro-Russian narrative in the daily press is created by the Serbian authorities, not by Russia. The reason why the editors are involved in this process comes more from their opportunism rather than their ideology. One of the respondents claims that "the front pages of the tabloids are firstly checked in various government cabinets before they go printed."

As content analysis has already showed that Serbian daily press reports are more positive, emotional and biased than those of the Russian Sputnik, it is possible to conclude that the pro-Russian narrative created in Serbia does not have much to do with Moscow. It is created by Serbian journalist and editors, but not even directly by them. Those political elites who control the Serbian media landscape have the biggest possible impact on the creation of such a narrative. The Pro-Russian narrative is controlled, created and encouraged by the ruling Serbian Progressive Party led by President Aleksandar Vucic. There are several possible reasons for that, and many of the journalists I interviews say that it all boils down to Vucic’s political need to maintain personal popularity by presenting himself as a leader who can talk both to the East and to the West. Moreover, by creating pro-Russian narrative, Aleksandar Vucic tries to calm his voters who are more nationalistic and more in favor of Russia and its traditional system of values.

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  • In the last few years, the international community has been intensely alerting on the expansion and strengthening of Russian influence in Western Balkans, especially in the countries that are in the accession negotiation process for the EU membership. In this way, Russia demonstrates its power, although it is aware that this region geographically belongs to Europe, while economically depends largely on the European Union itself.
  • Journalists I talked to aknowledge that they are facing pressures. One TV journalist told me that the key influence on the media comes from the very top of the rulling party. As far as real, direct Russian leverage on the media is concerned, she believes that Russia would not even be able to advertise a topic which is in contradiction the to politics of those who control the media in Serbia. Another tabloid editor claims that he is almost sure that the Russians do not have influence over Informer, which is strongly associated with a pro-Russian editorial policy.
  • The question that arises is how big is the role of the Serbian authorities in creating and encouraging pro-Russian narratives in the daily press. One of the journalists pointed out that when it comes to the attitude of the authorities towards Russia, Vucic tries to satisfy his pro-Russian nationalist electorate through the media. The former correspondent in Brussels sees two major influences when we talk about Russia, one of which goes through Sputnik, and the other one coming from the ruling political party which promotes rusophilia in daily press.
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