Original scientific paper
The Election Campaign of 1990 in Croatia in the light of Croatian and Serbian Journalism
Davor Pauković
; The political science research centre, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The author shows the basic elements in the strategies of argumentation employed in Croatian and Serbian journalistic discourse during the electioncampaign in Croatia. The campaign was short, but the events that precededit had a large influence on Croatian and Serbian journalism. In the context of the crisis of federalism and the collapse of national relations the election campaign served to further stimulate national hatred. The article is based on an analysis of the Croatian newspapers Vjesnik, Večernji list, Danas and Start, and the Serbian newspapers Politika, Duga, NIN and Intervju. The first part of the work deals with the liberalization and transition process after the introduction of party pluralism and the creation of new political parties. It also presents the general attributes of the election campaign and the reporting of the Croatian
and Serbian papers regarding the campaign. The author also analyses two events that occurred during the campaign: the mass meeting that took place in Petrova Gora on 4 March 1990 and the “assassination attempt” on President of the HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union), Franjo Tuđman, in Benkovac on 18 March 1990. The Croatian papers tied the mass meeting at Petrova Gora to the widening “anti-bureaucratic revolution,” while the Serbian papers presentedit as a reply to growing Croatian nationalism. Similarly, the “assassination attempt” directed at Tuđman was interpreted by Croatian journalism as an attack on the democratic process, while the Serbian press presented it as a staged and expected reply from a provoked Serbian population.
Keywords
Election campaign; Croatian election of 1990; Croatian journalistic discourse; Serbian journalistic discourse
Hrčak ID:
27102
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2008.
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