engleski

Referendum campaign around the croatian accession to the EU – information or propaganda?

Completion of the Croatian accession negotiations with the EU and signing of the Accession Treaty were an introduction to the official government referendum campaign, which aimed to persuade Croatian citizens that the European path is the only right. Longtime exhaustive negotiations, public criticism directed to the ruling political groups because of the insufficient information process, and recently held parliamentary elections provoked concern of political elites for voter turnout, and the final outcome of the referendum. Despite the fact that the majority of Croatian citizens, according to the public opinion, highly supported eurointegration process for years, an additional problem was the inexperience of the referendum. Therefore, a big role in the campaign is shifted to the media, marked as one of the main multiplier in the government's communication strategy and the most important communication channel for mediation pro- European message, which some assesed as propaganda. Research was conducted at five- leading Croatian daily newspapers (Jutarnji list, Večernji list, 24sata, Novi list, Slobodna Dalmacija) included method of content analysis in a sample of 406 analyzed articles during the official campaign sought to determine the possible effects of a media campaign on the referendum outcome, analyze ethics (credibility) media announcements in the campaign, investigate the prevalence of topics related to Croatian EU accession in some newspapers and news forms, analyze the prevalence of individual chapters explore the relationship between journalists and the outcome of the referendum. The results showed that the euroreferendum was recognized as a significant media event, but nonetheless, there was no in-depth analysis of topics such as informing citizens and unevenly in different publications. Meanwhile, impartiality in reporting, clearly distinguishing information from the attitude of journalists and a direct link between title and content are just some of the indicators of the credibility of the analyzed media and informational role of the media in the campaign, which was only occasionally disturbed by one-sided reporting.

European Union ; euroreferendum ; referendum campaign ; Communication Strategy ; credibility of the media

Zagreb] : IFCA [i. e.] ; CCA [i. e.] ; Maribor : AMA [i. e.] Alma Mater Europaea – ECM [i. e.] European Center, 2013. ([Zagreb] : )