Media Consumption and Evaluation of Government Performance in Dealing with Covid-19 Pandemic in Serbia
Media Consumption and Evaluation of Government Performance in Dealing with Covid-19 Pandemic in Serbia

Author(s): Bojan Todosijević, Zoran Pavlović, Dragan Stanojević
Subject(s): Media studies, Sociology of Politics
Published by: Институт друштвених наука
Keywords: Media consumption; Government performance; Covid-19 pandemic; Serbia; Political bias
Summary/Abstract: Across the globe, societal reactions to the on-going Covid-19 pandemic revealed a close interaction between politics and the ability of societies to effectively deal with the pandemic. On the one side, political factors affected perceptions and preferred policies regarding the pandemic, while on the other side, the pandemic – the threat posed by it, restrictions, controversies – have affected political processes, and individual political attitudes and evaluations. In this interaction between government actions and citizens’ political attitudes, mass media are likely to play an important role. Normatively, the main role of the media is to transfer important information to the public in an objective and unbiased manner. It is, however, well known that this ideal image does not always fit the reality and that media are sometimes politically and ideologically biased. It is known from the literature that politically biased media may affect citizen’s attitudes, whether directly or through the so-called agenda-setting mechanism. But, it is also documented that citizens select media outlets according to their preexisting political orientations. Thus, what may sometimes appear as the biasing effect of the media, may simply be evidence of selective media consumption on the part of the consumers.

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