Mass Media and Collective Violence
Mass Media and Collective Violence

Summary/Abstract: Like other landmark historic events, the war on the territory of the former Yugoslavia has been explained by three types of theories: mythological, scientific and common-sensical, the latter making use of certain pseudoscientific arguments. The author claims that the theory blaming the media in all six republics of the former Yugoslavia for the outbreak of the war belongs to the latter type. The empirical data gathered on the eve of the war show that ethnic tolerance was highest in the republics which were later struck by the war: Bosnia and Hercegovina and Croatia. The author provides an alternative explanation of the role of the media in paving the way for the war. Only in Serbia did mass media, in the circumstances of the prevailing authoritarian orientation of the population before the war, serve to the aggressive nationalist leadership for political mobilization, which aroused in the Serbian people a feeling of impediment and a sense of omnipotence. After the outbreak of the war in Croatia and Bosnia and Hercegovina, the media have been only one of the elements in an ever-expanding spiral of hatred and violence.

• Details
• Contents