Media Monitoring Report II
September 27 – October 6

The media monitoring results for this period relate to four interconnected but different phases. The first phase was the last week before the elections as climax of campaign, the next one was the days of pre-elections silence, the third one was the week following the elections and finally, the fourth, beginning of campaign before the second electoral round.

The last quarter of media monitoring preceding the September 29 elections (including the days of pre-elections silence) did not have any significantly new characteristics, neither in behaviour of the main actors (“dirty campaign” was a climax) nor in media behaviour – continued “objectivistic” registering of events from the “safe distance”, i.e. further preparations for the “jump start” AFTERWARDS. The inflation of candidates did not leave much room for more obvious favouritism (irrespective of the of certain candidates` “wailing”), although the leading trio of forerunners was clearly given the extra publicity.

More heavy artillery was being used in the course of campaign, mainly verbal but also the one armed with more “solid” arguments (eggs, stones and bottles in Cacak); the verbal war of the candidates’ elections committees was gradually being transferred into the statements of actual actors. Refusal of direct dialogue (in our case surprisingly called “the duel”, in other words the clash, the fight!) led to a day to day raising of questions on one side (“The Elections Committee of Miroljub Labus has asked Vojislav Kostunica today if, during the electoral campaign, he has been in such a panic that he can only use the vocabulary of Ivan Markovic and Goran Matic”, BK TV, “Telefakt”, September 23), or the cynical and pathetic referring to actor NOT PARTICIPATING in the contest, on the other side (Kostunica at the rally in Smederevo: “Djindjic wanted the elections just to make us believe in illusion that they’ll remain in power until 2004. In such a case, every city in Serbia would turn into the dead city. Serbia may not live with them and under their rule any longer”, Studio B, September 23). That much about political correctness of actors.

FEW WORDS ON DISTRIBUTION OF PUBLICITY

During this campaign, more often than during the previous campaigns, reports appeared about “monitoring” of media, based on different methodologies and approaches, thus the characteristics observed. This is good since it makes the image of media behaviour more complex and multi-dimensional. However, this is not good in case the “round-about” method is applied (“everything is clearly obvious, no special research is necessary” stated one “expert” and survived his statement!). A most common model is a quantitative method (counting the number of candidates` appearances, measuring the space/time given), most often in different time segments.

Within CeSID, we have developed and have already been using for five years, somewhat different method – a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods.

Distribution of publicity is being measured not only at the manifest level (“active presentation“ – speaking about oneself) but also at the in-depth level (“passive presentation” – speaking about the other and other’s talk). In this manner, we measure the amount of impact of contents of (political) communication, practised by the campaign actors, on the media as well as the way the media “pack-up” those contents. Numerous complaints were made by the immediate actors about the «behaviour» of certain media in respect with the “deficient” amount of publicity given (naturally) to themselves and the “abundance” of publicity given to “the others”. Since these complaints originated from different sides, we might consider them as indirect proof that the media, not necessarily all of them, have exercised the equidistance in treatment of candidates, causing the anger of those who expected to be “favoured”. However, the data measured, e.g. for the state owned media, indicate no reasons for anger.

Therefore, the candidates who objectively had most chances for self-presentation, by the manner of their campaign (“negative campaign”) were raising the publicity of their competitors by “passive” presentation (most often by criticism).

Second level of qualitative analysis is the impact of the immediate actors` “environments” (for instance, the elections committees, but also the state institutions in which they participate), which also “represent” the actors, i.e. increasing (or decreasing) their publicity. A good example of such manner of publicity expansion (“indirect campaign”) is the marketing campaign “Proud of Serbia” launched by the Government of Serbia, formally not a part of any candidate’s pre-elections campaign, but bearing a “back up” effects. However, bearing in mind “taking sides” within the Government itself, those back up effects were relatively evenly distributed.

In the analysis of the media coverage of campaign, we have strictly differentiated reports on particular candidates related to their (parallel) state functions from those reflecting direct courting in favour of the election.

HYPOCRISY OF PRE-ELECTIONS “SILENCE”

Generally speaking, the media have strictly kept themselves from violating the pre-elections silence, which only in some sporadic cases has not been completely observed.

What has been “strictly prohibited” for the media, has not been prohibited for direct (and particularly for indirect) actors. Moreover, their “loud silence” has taken sophisticated shapes: telephone courting on the very day of elections, SMS communications with promotional contents and direct appeals to vote for the particular candidate, promotional materials in mailboxes of potential voters etc.

POST-ELECTIONS COOLING OF POLITICL ATMOSPHERE

Results of the first round have, to a certain extent, relaxed the “overheated” political atmosphere, providing the opportunity for the more rational approach than the one understanding the political contest as “continuance of war by use of different weapons”. Arrogance and “implacability” of rival options have mainly transformed into direction of (tacit) joint search for the models of the inevitable future coexistence if the elections turn successful.

During this phase, as well as during the continued campaign for the second round, the media have even more distanced themselves from the direct participation even in assessments and comments of results; this is the reason why some of them were flooded by appearances of the “expert” analysts of general practise, whose evaluations varied from exhilaration to desperation, with the significant amount of controversial statements, quite often lacking the sufficient distancing, hinting the unconcealed partiality and distasteful qualifications, not appropriate for serious analysts.