Original scientific paper
EU IS NOT YU – EU IS COOL: READING THE CROATIAN GOVERNMENT’S PRE-REFERENDUM VIDEOS ON THE CROATIAN ACCESSION TO THE EU
Zlatan Krajina
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
In this paper I analyse narratives and discourses mobilised in the prime-time
videos Croatian Government aired on national television channels prior to
the country’s EU referendum, in which citizens were to be informed on the
possible advantages and disadvantages of Croatia’s accession to the EU.
I adopt a double focus. First, I seek to identify some of the key communicative
forms utilised in those videos for purposes of achieving the electoral consent
to Croatia’s entrance in the EU. Second, I discuss the significance of those
videos for an understanding of Croatian government’s relationship with citizens,
that is, for the overall democratic process in which part of sovereignty
is to be transferred to the supra-national level. By deconstructing linguistic
(audiovisual) dynamics within the featured videos, I identify typical discursive
components across the featured videos, that is, the implicit power relation
between the producer of the videos (the Government) and the addressees
(citizens), as articulated in the thematic consistencies (a systematic absence
of the outcomes of EU entry negotiations) and structural patterns (a ‘person
in the street’ performs posing a question to the camera and an anonymous
voice responds through denial, ridicule or diversion from the posed question)
within the analysed videos. My research suggests that the videos served not
as information platforms (which they were supposedly designed to be) but as
Government’s propaganda. Instead of balanced information on Croatia’s entry
to the EU, the Government aired commercially formed advertisements in
which it was ‘selling’ the alleged benefits of accession, guaranteed by nothing
else but the mere ‘entry’. Instead of demonstrating the results of Croatian
negotiations with the EU, the videos told stories about miraculous economic
welfares achieved by some of the member states. I contextualise the videos
with reference to wider debates on political communications concerning the
pre-accession period in some other member states, and to the legacy of authoritarian
communications of the elites with the citizens in the specific Croatian
context.
Keywords
EU; Croatia; referendum; television; video; propaganda
Hrčak ID:
103956
URI
Publication date:
18.6.2013.
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