Between East and West: How Serbian journalists cover the war in Ukraine : A qualitative study investigating how journalism culture shapes Serbian coverage when framing the conflict in Ukraine

Sammanfattning: The press coverage of any armed conflict has traditionally played a crucial role during times of war since major abuses of human rights and war crimes are brought to the public due to journalists’ coverage. When Russia invaded Ukraine on the 24th of February 2022, it dominated the news for weeks since many parts of the world were heavily affected. Many scholars have investigated the challenges that come when reporting on wars and conflicts. There are, however, few studies that have focused on Serbian journalists. Therefore, this study sets out to investigate how Serbian journalists cover the war in Ukraine and what influences their reporting by conducting in-depth interviews with seven journalists working the political beat. Nygren et al. (2018) found that journalistic culture and political context direct and shape the coverage to a large extent. Therefore, Thomas Hanitzsch’s model of journalism culture (2007) is used as the main theoretical framework of the project.   The study has shown that Serbian journalists generally believe that staying objective and presenting all sides of the conflict should guide the coverage of the war. However, they are put in a difficult position because of their country’s conflicted stance: Serbia has ties to Russia and the EU; it condemned the war in Ukraine but refused to impose sanctions on the aggressor. Consistent with the previous literature, the study found that Serbia’s political-historical context shapes the journalistic coverage when reporting on the conflict. Journalists are generally critical of their government but tend to agree with it when discussing the war. This finding can be linked to the NATO bombing of Belgrade in 1999 and the Serbian economy, which heavily depends on Russian oil, gas, and investments and would considerably decline if Serbian sanctions were imposed on Russia. Although, when counteracting propaganda, fake news, and disinformation, some Serbian journalists took a more active and assertive role in reporting on behalf of the socially disadvantaged, which in this case was the Ukrainian people who were underrepresented in the media coverage.