SOCIOLOŠKE DIMENZIJE PERCEPCIJE SIGURNOSTI U URBANIM SREDINAMA ZAPADNOG BALKANA: IZMEĐU STVARNOG RIZIKA I MEDIJSKE KONSTRUKCIJE STRAHA
SOCIOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS OF SECURITY PERCEPTION IN URBAN ENVIRONMENTS OF THE WESTERN BALKANS: BETWEEN REAL RISK AND THE MEDIA CONSTRUCTION OF FEAR

Summary/Abstract: This article investigates the sociological dimensions of security perception in urban environments of the Western Balkans, focusing on the structural gap between objectively measurable risk indicators and citizens' subjective feelings of insecurity. The research was conducted through triangulation of secondary sources, including analysis of official crime statistics for the 2019-2024 period, a systematic review of comparative surveys on security perception, and qualitative framing analysis of media coverage of security topics in five major regional cities (Banja Luka, Sarajevo, Belgrade, Zagreb, Podgorica). The findings demonstrate a consistent asymmetry between actual crime — which has remained stable or in slight decline in most observed environments — and perceived insecurity, which over the same period rose by 12 to 24 percentage points. The largest gap was identified in cities most heavily affected by armed conflicts in the 1990s. The study introduces the concept of compensatory security anxiety (CSA) to describe a phenomenon in which post-conflict populations project unresolved collective traumas of the past onto contemporary micro-security incidents, further amplified by media framing. Media content analysis identified four dominant narrative patterns: epidemiological (38%), ethnic (27%), institutional-incompetence (19%) and classical moral-panic framing (16%). The implications point to the necessity of integral security-communication policies capable of bridging the gap between objective and perceived risk.

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