MEDIJIZACIJA RELIGIJE I RELIGIJSKI IDENTITET KAO ELEMENT ETNIČKIH I NACIONALNIH ARTIKULACIJA U BOSNI I HERCEGOVINI
MEDIATIZATION OF RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS IDENTITY AS AN ELEMENT OF ETHNIC AND NATIONAL ARTICULATIONS IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Summary/Abstract: The text theoretically analyzes the connection between religious, ethnic and national identity as one of the complex transformative processes in social theory. Religion was one of the defining elements of the development of ethnicities and nations in pre-modern societies. The modern era of the creation of abstract identities and impersonal organizations revitalized the revival of community identity through the use of symbolic material taken from religions. In Bosnian and Herzegovinian society, confession played a strong role in the construction of identity, which conditioned the processes of sacralization of the nation and religiosity of politics and vice versa. Expressed forms of ethno-confessionalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the sense of revitalizing community identity in relation to religious symbolic material do not find their material only in religious funds. They also find their source in other social and cultural resources, such as the media space. Mediatization of religion in this sense would denote processes within which the media do not produce representations of religion characteristic of a particular religious community, but rather those that serve certain social functions. Starting from the standpoint that the present, media-created religious narratives are not related to promoting ideas of understanding the other and different, but to strengthening the religious identification of the population, which, in turn, is consequently reflected in ethnic, national articulation and thus deepens the already existing social disunity, the research is focused on the analysis of the methods and forms of media reporting on religion and religious topics in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The results of the analysis show that the media, organized in different ethnic communities, follow the pattern of dominant topics related to only one religious community, most often creating an emotional or sensationalist tone, which, by exploiting religion, religious rituals and customs in the revisionism of historical events and war suffering, builds a harsh narrative towards members of other ethnic groups. Their action within the framework of real social circumstances and acceptable discourses can be different, if we take into account the fact that they are not only able to promote existing social attitudes, but also to create new ones.

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