Brown Bag Series: Protest, Crisis, and Media Freedom in Serbia

In Serbia, economic disappointments from the post-socialist "transition" as well as the prolonged reign of a single party, the Progressive Party, have led to a deepening feeling of crisis. Young people hold little trust in institutions and often view emigration as the preferred solution, not being able to envision the necessary economic and political changes in their own country. In recent years, much political dissatisfaction has been focused on the media, both the state's role in suppressing media freedom and the media's failure to live up to ethical standards. This dissatisfaction is expressed through the idea of media as a mirror, reflecting the problems in society. Drawing on a year of ethnographic work, including interviews and participant observation, in Serbia, this paper theorizes the description of media as a mirror and the ways in which this metaphor both expresses and channels political dissatisfaction, including the range of possible solutions it implies. Understanding how citizens articulate political dissatisfaction using discussions of media has implications for the study of authoritarian and semi-authoritarian public spheres, as well as the intersection of media ethnographies and political ethnographies more broadly.