Media Portrait of Drug Lords in Serbia

Kolaković-Bojović, Milica and Paraušić, Ana (2020) Media Portrait of Drug Lords in Serbia. In: Međunarodni naučni tematski skup Droga i narkomanija: pravni, kriminološki, sociološki i medicinski problemi, Palić, 2-3. septembar 2020. Institut za kriminološka i sociološka istraživanja, Beograd, pp. 391-404. ISBN 978-86-80756-33-2

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Abstract

Triggered by growing influence of media, whose role transformed from “those who transmit an info on reality” to “those who create reality(ies)”, this paper tried to explore how media in Serbia report on persons who have been publicly labelled as drug lords by representatives of relevant institutions or other prominent government officials, and how their media portraits framed by journalists’ work differ from those created by users of social networks. In an effort to identify the main contours of media portrait of drug lords in Serbia, the authors based their research on the analysis of media portraits of three persons publicly labelled as drug lords by the high-level state officials. The research included the content analysis of news published on the portals of the most circulated daily newspapers in Serbia, as well as the posts on the social network Twitter over a five-year period, focusing on the rule of law and the social context in order to explore the public discourse on this phenomenon, traditionally perceived as an “evil against people/society”. The research has shown surprising order in terms of issue prioritization, which challenges the stereotypes on drug lords as a not only legal, but social “evil against people/society” phenomenon. Furthermore, the results have shown the significant difference between on how drug lords have been portraited in the newspapers compared with the approach of Twitter users.

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