Media outlets – positive on Russia and China, negative on the EU and the USA

The one-year analysis carried out by CRTA included media content on foreign actors (European Union, United States, Russia, China and NATO) from the 12 most powerful media outlets with the largest viewership and readership in Serbia – TVs: RTS 1, TV Pink, TV Prva and TV Happy; daily newspapers: Informer, Blic, Kurir, Večernje novosti and the Internet portals: Blic, Kurir, Novosti and B92. In the last 12 months, the monitoring recorded different tones in mentioning
these powers – positive, negative or neutral perception, and the research included the full media coverage about politics, army and armament, health care, economics, Kosovo, human rights, culture and the Yugoslavia break-up wars.

 

Who was the talk of the town?

 

America was compellingly the first in media outlets news, inarguably first with 26,853 mentions in media content. It was a tie for second place between Russia (19,735) and the EU (19,555), while in the back, we had China (8,834) and NATO (5,075) (Figure 1).

 

However, it was not only important how many mentions they had but also what those were like, what signals about these powers the public opinion creators, in fact, emitted. If we excluded the neutral coverage, there was lingering NATO with even 30 per cent of negative media coverage and only three per cent of positive content. Although the first in the number
of mentions, the USA was second last regarding the perception – only four per cent of the content presented America in a positive light, and yet 18 per cent of content was negative. The middle of the table included the EU which was perceived leaning towards the negative side, with three times more negative than positive content.

The first two places were reserved for “Serbian friends”, what we could often hear and see in the media. China won second place with a good ratio of positive (18 per cent) and negative (6 per cent) statements, while the first place went to the most popular Russia with 25 per cent of positive statements compared to 6 per cent of negative (Figure 2).

 

The source of negative articles and features on China and Russia primarily came from foreign media sources, used to report on foreign policy. For example, Biden or some EU representative would criticise Russia, while both foreign and domestic actors shared production of negative content on the EU, USA and NATO.

 

What were they talking about?

 

The topic of politics was the centre of attention for 12 months and the foreign powers were mostly mentioned in the context of interior, foreign and regional politics or the EU integration.

The second place was unstable, shifting between various topics. In December 2020 and the beginning of 2021, when another wave of coronavirus shook both Serbia and the world, the issue of health care came second. The main narrative in this period referred to the fact that the European Union failed to meet the promise and deliver the guaranteed amount of vaccine doses to Serbia and the Western Balkans region, while, on the other hand, huge amounts were secured through China bringing salvation from corona in that period.

In May 2021, when with the fair weather the pandemic lessened, the health matters lost their relevance, so the world would continue its war in peace, securing arms, making alliances among different forces, and the army topics took over the second place, peaking in August during the Afghanistan crises and withdrawal of American troops (the USA presentation here was extremely negative).

Until recently, to be precise, until October, the army was the second most represented topic, and then the economics pushed it out. The analysis showed that energy-related topics were four times more present in the scope of economics than in September of the same year.

Finally, Kosovo-related topics were the least represented, so only during the July peaks, when President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić and Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti met in Brussels, these topics occupied more media space, particularly in September during the dispute about vehicle licence plates (Figure 3).

 

In the context of these topics, the presentation of Russia and China was more positive than negative, while in contrast, the EU and the USA were predominantly negative. The only topic presenting the EU more positive than negative was the economics. It was observed that the donations from the EU, the entity providing the largest financial support to Serbia, were in fact recognised (Figure 4).

 

 

Who wanted to be the first?

 

Aleksandar Vučič, the President of Serbia, was the most present political actor in the media, with the most mentions in articles and features with foreign powers reference, far more than any other government official. This made a huge difference since Vučić was in charge of everything, obvious from the fact that President’s words were quoted 4,444 times in the monitored media content with the identified presence of foreign powers.

At the same time, Prime Minister Ana Brnabić came second with 1,022 mentions, followed by Ivica Dačić (739), Nikola Selaković (454), Petar Petković (439), Aleksandar Vulin (362) and others (Figure 5).

 

If we disregarded the neutral tone, the President of Serbia was mostly quoted in news programmes with positive mentions of Russia and China, and the ones with negative tones about the EU and USA activities (Figure 6).

 

 

What was the media message?

 

In the media outlets we monitored, television was the most powerful means of information since citizens of Serbia predominantly received their information through this communication channel. The TV, in fact, stood for the most radical approach with more contrasted differences between positive and negative coverage.

The national frequency TV viewers were offered the black and white image about the “evil West” and “friendly East”, and the loudest advocates of such image of the world were TV Pink and TV Happy. The morning news programmes represented a significant stereotype generator as the audience was being offered an extremely dichotomous view of the world by pro-government analysts, journalists and members of the ruling coalition (Figure 7).

 

The daily newspapers were not different from their mightier TV brother, and the loudest voices were coming from Informer, Večernje novosti and Kurir. Front pages, reserved for promoting the government and continuous negative campaigning against the opposition, represented fertile ground for creating negative discourse on Western countries, conveniently designating opponents as “US mercenaries”, “NATO agents”, etc. Of course, not only on front pages, but also in other columns and pages, an opportunity was not missed to extol Russia and China and belittle the USA, NATO and EU (Figure 8).

 

Finally, the Internet portals offered a more balanced approach, but with remaining tendencies of reporting on behalf of one side and against the other (Figure 9).

 

Since public opinion polls on citizens’ attitudes towards foreign actors monitored such correlations, Russia and China were usually observed as Serbia’s friends, the attitude towards the EU was ambivalent and unfriendly towards America and NATO, it was obvious that in their coverage, the media outlets not only fostered but instructed citizens’ attitudes.