Framing of poverty in TV reporting in Serbia

Abstract

The paper analyzes how poverty is presented in the television discourse in Serbia. The theoretical-methodological framework of research relies on quantitative-qualitative content analysis and the concept of media framing in which the usage of patterns of selection, emphasis and exclusion result in the interpretation and assessment of certain events. The sample for analysis consisted of 35 central news programs broadcasted on five television stations on seven cyclically selected days in the period from 10 th October to 27 th October 2021. The goal of the research was to determine the dominant frames of the representation of poverty and to examine whether and to what extent used frames differ in comparison to the previous research. The results show that television framing of poverty is consistent with the general pattern of problematic media polarization in Serbia. Two frames are dominantly represented: general economic poverty and propaganda-populist frame. In the case of the first one, poverty is presented as a background theme in analytic reports on the political and macroeconomic issues. It is reduced to an impersonal approach that does not have the strength to indicate the seriousness of the multidimensional problem of poverty. The second frame is characterized by a blurred picture of poverty. It is distributed through reports on the promotional activities of the president ? the opening of factories and road infrastructure and explains the increasingly pronounced mutual connection between the ruling elite and journalists in the use of demagoga and propaganda matrices in conveying and setting frames as generally acceptable.