The Politics of Giving Voice: Media Framing of Extremist Groups in the 2010 Pride Parade in Serbia

ABSTRACT

Serbia was highly polarized ahead of the 2010 Pride parade in Belgrade, an event marred by violence. It is often assumed that the media played a negative role by uncritically giving voice to anti-LGBT activists. To investigate this claim, we conducted a quantitative and qualitative analysis of media reporting as well as 25 in-depth interviews with journalists. We conclude that the media denied extremists direct access to the media. However, due to the high polarization, the media did empower nonviolent opponents of the parade, and hence indirectly contributed to the stereotypical and sometimes derogatory representation of the LGBT population.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. It should be noted though, that this should be understood in the wider Yugoslav context. In 1959, the Criminal Code of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia criminalized male homosexuality. By 1977, the federal republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia’s autonomous province of Vojvodina had all decriminalized homosexuality (Kahlina 2013, 6).

2. This research was made possible due to funding from the European Union’s (EU) Seventh Framework Programme, as part of the “Media, Conflict and Democratisation” (http://www.mecodem.eu) project (Grant No. 613,370, Principal Investigator: Katrin Voltmer, University of Leeds, UK). The data used in this study have been collected by MeCoDEM Work Package 3 “Media representations of democratisation conflicts” (Work Package leader: Nebojša Vladisavljević; country team leader: Filip Ejdus; data collected by Aleksandra Krstić and Davor Marko); and Work Package 4, “Journalistic ethics and work practices in conflict societies” (Work Package leader: Irene Neverla; country team leader: Nebojša Vladisavljević; data collected by Aleksandra Krstić, Ana Stojiljković and Filip Ejdus). The MeCoDEM project investigated the role of traditional media and ICTs in democratization conflicts that accompanied and followed transitions from authoritarian rule to more democratic forms of government in Serbia, Egypt, South Africa, and Kenya.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme [613370].