Digital transformation of journalism and media in Serbia: What has gone wrong?

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to sketch a brief history of complex digital transformation of media and journalism in the context of Serbia, a European country which has undergone politically turbulent transition from authoritarian to democratic rule over the past 20 years. Despite the long process of the EU integration, the country has been recently downgraded to a partly free hybrid regime with rapid decline of press freedom, high political and media polarization and raising political and economic instrumentalization of media. Against this background, the paper problematizes how the main structural transformations of the media environment, such as the transition from state to public broadcasting, the introduction of new media laws and the lengthy process of media privatization intersected and influenced different phases and outcomes of the digital transformation of journalism and news media in the country. Unlike the digital journalism development in established democracies of the West, the real systemic change and adaptation of Serbia’s media market to easy-to-use technologies, newsrooms convergence, profitable content and participatory journalism has been largely limited and overpowered by the interplay between the state and the media over the past two decades.