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

University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Studies, Kardeljeva pl. 5 SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia, karmen.erjavec{at}fdv.uni-lj.si

Zala Voli

School of Journalism and Communication, University of Queensland, Cnr Hood and Walcott Sts, St Lucia, Brisbane Qld 4072, Australia, z.volcic{at}uq.edu.au

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.

Key Words: Serbia • Kosovo • nationalism • nationalistic journalism • recontextualization

The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, Vol. 12, No. 3, 67-86 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1081180X07302943


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