VAGUENESS AND DISSOCIATION IN ENGLISH POLITICAL NEWS DISCOURSE

The main goal of this paper is to indicate the importance of the issues of vagueness and dissociation in discourse interpretation. The discourse that is taken into consideration is the discourse of political news written in the English language. This particular discourse is widely available to readers and deals with important political issues, which is why the choice of words and phrases should ideally be unbiased and accurate. If not, the readers may misinterpret the discourse and have a wrong impression of the political issue. In this research, newspaper articles are taken as an example of political news discourse. All articles analyzed were written in online British and American broadsheet and tabloid newspapers and they all dealt with the migrant crisis and 2019 Hong Kong protests. By taking into consideration the political context and the theoretical framework used in this research, 44 instances considered to be examples of vagueness and dissociation were identified, which were found in 14 newspaper articles.

ETHICS IN PUBLIC RELATIONS: ETHICAL THEORIES, CODES AND CONFLICTS

Public relations, an important element of the media society, is a management function which helps establish and nurture the links of mutual communication, understanding, acceptance and cooperation between the organization and the surrounding public. The development of the public relations profession is commonly seen as a progressive evolution from unsophisticated and unethical early practice to the planned, strategic, ethical campaigns of the modern age. However, when discussing the practice of public relations in the XXI century, there are certain doubts, or rather, ethical conflicts. Being the key moral principle and the fundamental philosophical concept, truth should be the goal of every relationship and communication. However, in the public relations practice, truth is occasionally suppressed due to its partial placement. The process of communication itself functions to a significant extent through the mass media, and the violation of ethics in that respect is the trade in media space, which is a difficult form of violation of the philosophy of morality. The main purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of ethics and its development in public relations. This paper analyzes the ethics of public relations as a self-regulation platform for this profession. The application of ethical theories based on utilitarian and deontological approaches has also been discussed. In addition, codes of ethics applied in the PR profession are presented, as well as examples of unethical actions in the public relations profession.

FEUILLETON IN SERBIAN PRESS

The feuilleton is one of the most specific and oldest genres in journalism, but also one of the least analyzed and defined. Often appropriated as a literary genre in journalism, it has changed its form, style and content throughout history in order to adapt to the current circumstances in the media world. In keeping with the contemporary development of digital platforms, online journalism and sensational, fast-paced reporting, its specifics and peculiarities bring new challenges. The aim of the paper is to note the use, specifics, topics and the position of this genre through the analysis of feuilletons in the serious, semitabloid and tabloid daily press in Serbia. Additionally, the goal is to observe potential differences in relation to the type of press, but also the ways in which this newspaper genre is implemented in online newspaper portals. In accordance with these goals, the method of descriptive and comparative content analysis as well as the statistical method were used in the paper. The research was conducted on four daily newspapers, Danas, Politika, Večernje novosti and Blic, in the period from January 24, 2020 to January 30,2020. Twenty seven issues of these newspapers were analyzed, including 2,230 media texts, 30 of which were feuilletons. Research has shown that this genre is more common in serious than in semi-tabloid and tabloid press, that the most common topic covered through this genre is politics and that there are significant differences between the same feuilletons in printed newspapers in comparison to online editions.

THE ETHICAL DIMENSION OF JOURNALISTIC PROFESSIONALISM: VIEWS OF LITHUANIAN JOURNALISTS

When evaluating the normative dimension of journalistic professionalism, researchers note that it is related to the core values of professional journalism, manifested in the recognition and application of common professional ethical principles in journalistic activities. This allows us to identify the existence of the ethical dimension of journalistic professionalism. This study examines the ethical dimension of journalistic professionalism by analysing the attitudes of Lithuanian journalists towards the importance of ethical aspects, codified in the Code of Ethics in Providing Information to the Public of Lithuania (2016) for journalistic professionalism.

INTEGRATION CHALLENGES OF MEDIA POLICY IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

In the process of political transition of the Western Balkan countries, the non-EU countries in particular, the reform of communication systems occupies one of the primary places within the implementation of economic, cultural, political and integration processes of each country. Communication research that seeks to define the dilemmas of the current communication situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a determining framework of the media system, includes many socio-political factors conditioned by structural changes within the society of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the last 25 years. The complete cultural and political deconstruction of the Bosnian society at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century destabilized the internal organization of the political, cultural and economic system, especially in the domain of public communication and organization of the media subsystem. Apart from the numerous current challenges, the development of a unified media policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the establishment of a public media system in accordance with the requirements of the European Union and the interests of all citizens, are among the key issues that state institutions are facing at the moment. This paper primarily deals with the analysis of the European Commission’s annual reports on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s progress in the process of implementing reforms in the media policy sector and based on these annual reports it suggests the key factors for future national media policy definition. The goal is to establish a national media policy and reform the communication system in a broader context as a political, cultural and economic issue, i.e., as an institutionally agreed path for political compromise, integration of society and definition of collective identities.

PROPAGANDA TECHNIQUES IN FAKE NEWS PUBLISHED BY SERBIAN MAINSTREAM MEDIA

Observing propaganda as an essential part of the mass-communication process, its techniques and characteristics are changing constantly, both verbally and visually, adapting to the new trends. As Philip Taylor noted, propaganda is ‘a deliberate attempt to persuade people to think and behave in a desired way’ which is based on ‘the conscious, methodical and planned decisions to employ techniques of persuasion designed to achieve specific goals that are intended to benefit those organizing the process’ (Taylor, 2013: 6). If we accept a definition of fake news offered by the Cambridge Dictionary which states that those are ‘false stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke’, then the relation between the two terms becomes more prominent, especially in the modern age. In that context, the goal of this paper is to examine which propaganda aspects are dominant and in what way they are implemented into contemporary fake news, published in Serbian mainstream media. The theoretical framework will be based on findings of contemporary research in the domain of propaganda communication. Through the qualitative analysis approach the authors will conduct the research focusing on detecting and analyzing propaganda techniques used in confirmed fake news articles in Serbian mainstream media which were discovered and deconstructed by reliable and certified fact checkers (Raskrinkavanje and Fake news tragač). The unit of the analysis will be a deconstructed text which is labeled as fake news.

PODCASTS AND JOURNALISM

The application of new technologies in journalism contributes to the development of new forms of journalistic content. Podcasts that present content posted online and allow online users to access them whenever and however many times they want are experiencing continued success around the world (Newman, 2021). This development has also led to a variety in the content of podcasts, and the approach to topics is journalistic in some podcast series. Podcast authors can be journalists, as well as other people, Internet users and sometimes celebrities. For example, it is predicted that this year there will be a “battle for the stars” between the platforms and the media. The aim of this paper is mapping the use of podcasts in Serbia, starting, above all, from podcasts as journalism technology. A few years ago, the traditional mainstream media in Serbia tried to keep pace with the innovators in the online environment and increase attendance at their online editions. The results of this research show that the podcast develops in two ways when it comes to journalism: as part of the online media and as an individual endeavor of the author. It can be concluded that the podcast that is the individual endeavor of the author, considering that it is realized outside the media institution, is a freer form of expression and is often very popular. Finally, since the podcast technology is cheaper than radio or television broadcasting and that this broadcasting does not require the permission of the regulatory body, it is run by other companies, not just media companies.

JOURNALISM AND COMMUNICATION STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION OF THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK PLATFORMS IN HIGHER EDUCATION – INSTAGRAM-BASED CASE STUDY

The rapid development of technologies and their rapid transformation influenced changes in the world and people’s lives and the educational process evolved. Traditional methods of education are enriched with modern technologies, and digital devices become significant elements in modern education. Social network platforms are an important part of life in modern society, they are visited daily by a huge number of people using computers, tablets and smartphones. Their popularity has made them convenient for use in various fields. These platforms have been accepted as student learning support tools, which is why they are increasingly important in the field of higher education. The paper explores the use of social network platforms in higher education, with a focus on social networking services provided by Instagram. In this research, we tried to determine whether the students of journalism and communication used Instagram for educational purposes. Students (N=100) were surveyed through a printed questionnaire at the Faculty of Philosophy. The results show that most students use social networking services for educational purposes. The platform they use for this purpose is Facebook. When it comes to Instagram, most respondents have an Instagram account but do not use it in education.

CHALLENGES OF MOBILE JOURNALISM IN DIGITAL MEDIA AGE

Owing to the constant technology improvement and innovation, new ways of reception and creation of media content have developed, leading to the redefining of known communication processes. In this new digital media age, characterized by new features such as convergence, mobility and interactivity, mobile journalism emerged as a new journalistic form-challenging relation between creators and recipients of media content. Even though the idea of user-generated media content that can be instantly shared and broadcasted using small mobile devices sounds like a multi-beneficial concept, this model still faces many challenges. In practice, numerous questions have arisen, such as ethics, reliability and quality of such content as well as acceptance and implementation into professional newsrooms. Therefore, the aim of this article is to review an academic approach to this topic, backed by practical examples, in order to place mobile journalism into a complex modern media system and evaluate its potential in the context of future development.

NEWSPAPER POLITIKA ON THE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN THE KINGDOMS OF SERBIA AND BULGARIA IN 1904-1905

A considerable amount of the historical material has been preserved for the study of the political relations of the Balkan countries in the first two decades of the 20th century. We are acquainted with the details of these relations based on the documents of the governments of the Balkan countries or the governments of the great powers, the correspondence of ministers, official notes, decisions and commands of officers, the reports of Serbian and foreign newspapers, etc. The subject of this paper is the course and intensity of political and economic relations between the Kingdom of Serbia and the Kingdom of Bulgaria during 1904 and 1905. This paper resulted from the analysis of newspaper articles and reports published in the daily newspaper Politika, but also from archival materials and relevant literature. The paper also contains the analysis of the media response related to the signing of the Serbian-Bulgarian Alliance Agreement in 1904, as well as the signing of the Customs Alliance Agreement in 1905 between Belgrade and Sofia. The Macedonian issue, as a topic that placed emphasis on the relations between the two neighbors, is also an inevitable part of the research corpus of this paper.