engleski

Communication of Dubrovnik under Siege with the World

In the last quarter of 1991. and the first half of 1992. and beyond, communication of Dubrovnik under siege where the phone lines were cut off, was reduced to one satellite supported fax machine, lists of addresses with fax numbers of friends of the town scattered all over the world not believing that heavy artillery attacks on UNESCO protected town were indeed happening and a number of dedicated brave people who made it their mission to let the world know the truth. While the general story about who these people were and how these fragile communication ties operated is generally known, there has been no holistic project which would study this unique communication model studying retold memories, private diaries and notes and a great number of official correspondence and documents that remained untouched for decades, many of those documents being in private collections. The research project where these documents and narratives would be systematically studied is long overdue. Its value is interdisciplinary reaching into history, sociology, political and communication sciences, let alone non-fiction literature value of some of the personal accounts from the friends of Dubrovnik reaching out from the world with words of support and encouragement. Its magnitude and time consuming efforts which will be needed overcome by far the limits of one inter-disciplinary conference, but, at the same time, there is no better occasion to present its plan publicly to a knowledgeable audience seeking opinions and advice. We, therefore, plan a qualitative research which would include content analysis of documents from private and official sources and media and narrative analysis and interviews with witnesses and private notes of the deceased. In this introductory, very first phase of the project, this conference, we intend to present the studied events chronologically and show the draft of the project plan. We believe that Dubrovnik Media Days hosted by the Department of Communication of University of Dubrovnik is the very best platform to monitor and present the project as it progresses.

Dubrovnik ; city under siege ; communication ; friends of Dubrovnik

Public presentation at International Scientific Conference "30 years since the attack of Dubrovnik: Political, communicational, and cultural aspects of the city under siege" held in Dubrovnik 1-2 October 2021