Abstract

AbstractHaving fallen out of the scholarly and public spotlight after the cessation of the conflicts in the 1990s, Serbia nowadays seldom takes the central place in scholarly analysis. With the six-year rule of Aleksandar Vučić, nowadays the President of Serbia (in addition to being the former Prime Minister), however, we are of the opinion that his reign needs to be tackled from a scholarly perspective. With the diminishing of media freedoms, constant attacks on the free press, the suppression of almost all opposing political organizations, parties, and activists/politicians, Serbia is nowadays more and more often described as a “dictatorship” under the rule of one man, Aleksandar Vučić. In December 2018, a series of mass public protests started occurring regularly in several Serbian cities, all aimed against the rule of Aleksandar Vučić. Observing Serbia’s autocrat through the lens of elite theory, we tackle the protests against him, including the government’s official responses, as well as the smearing of the protests by the government-supporting media.

Highlights

  • Serbia is no stranger to anti-government protests

  • Dragan Đilas and Sergej Trifunović were seen to be a target in an order to compare them with Hitler by Nebojša Siljanović, who sent the email to several media owned by one Radoica Milosavljević, who owns eight media, and is known to be connected to the high-ranking member of the Progressive Party, Bratislav Gašić, who was put in the position of the Head of the Intelligence Agency by Aleksandar Vučić himself (Radojević 2018)

  • We have presented the ongoing protests against the increasingly autocratic regime of the Republic of Serbia’s President, Aleksandar Vučić

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Summary

Introduction

Serbia is no stranger to anti-government protests. By late 2018, a new wave of protests swept through Serbia, aimed against the government and the authority-figure, the President. After more than six years in power, Vučić’s Serbia has seen a significant downslide in terms of media freedoms, an increase in violence, and worsening public finances; the Belgrade historian, Dubravka Stojanović, spoke how “all signs of a dictatorship are there” (Stojanović, in: Obrenović 2019). We are going to show a depiction of the 2018-19 protests, put them into a socio-political context, and analyze the media’s and government’s response to them. President Vučić’s regime will be initially confronted through the perspectives of elite theory and positionality, after which the protests themselves shall be tackled, including the government’s response to them. Special attention shall be devoted to the government-supporting media, who are continuously trying to paint the protesters in grim colours

The Socio-Political Context and Elite Theory
The Protests
Governmental response and the pro-government media
Conclusion

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