engleski

Croatian Wikipedia: Nationalistic or Anti-Fascist Discourse?

Social and political life, and economy as well, today have become extensively situated within the domain of the media. For younger generations the interpretation of history, art, politics, or science, is relevant almost only within Google and within Wikipedia. Outside these two platforms, the world of information and interpretation hardly exists. Searching or investigating these two platforms, can be a real “democracy check”. The media are transforming societies (Corrigan 1997 ; Couldry 2000 ; McQuail 2000 ; Bennett and Entman 2001 ; Curran 2002 ; Meyer 2002 ; Nunes 2006 ; Shirky 2008). What the media are constructing is a certain representation of reality. The nature and role of the media, among others, are important factors that shape the character of democracy and of civic engagement within it. Citizens around the world have become increasingly aware of and interested in the expanding use of digital technologies in their socially engaged communications. This presentation focuses on how particular groups in Croatia are taking the opportunities offered by new media platforms like Wikipedia for digital (civil and political) activism, to promote ideology of Croatian nationalism. Using Wikipedia, one of the globally most influential digital information platforms, to spread a particular discourse on history and the nation, definitely can be defined as an example of digital activism. We define digital activism as the practice of using digital technology for political and social change, for promotion of different ideologies, for social mobilization towards promotion of democracy and tolerance, or exclusiveness and hate. Croatian Wikipedia was created in 2003. In last few years, while researching published articles, we realized big discourse difference especially in articles on Croatian history during the WWII. Such articles used to be revised every few weeks, each time written in different discourse – once from the nationalistic perspective with positive interpretation of the role of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), “Ustaše” regime and its leader Ante Pavelić – next time from the anti- fascist perspective, blaming Ustaše for collaborating with Nazi and killing thousands of civilians. In Croatia, primary and high school students massively use Wikipedia as a source of information, as it is always first on Google. If they search for the same topics in different time intervals, they can get completely opposite articles and become very confused – which “facts” are “real facts”? Which interpretation of Croatian history is “correct”?

Wikipedia ; media construction of reality ; media discourse ; nationalism ; anti-fascism

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