engleski

Mythical Structures and Narratives in Croatian TV News

Messages and symbols, narratives and mythical structures are all around us ; they are hidden in every dimension of our daily communication. Today’s communication is hardly possible to imagine without media. Despite its recent struggle to coexist with the internet and new converged media, television is still the dominant media force, whether measured by audience numbers, commercial success, or cultural influence. Television news carries texts, sounds and visuals and affects the texts, sounds and visuals it carries. Depending on news selection, presentation and framing, news shapes our identities, our attitudes toward the community, toward social, national and other minorities, and our general view on the world around us. Over the last two decades television in Croatia has undergone a rapid social, political and economic transition. Changes include the transformation from one dominant political-ideology (socialist and communist, totalitarian and authoritarian) and economic system (a state-managed economy without free market) into another one more broadly defined as a market-based liberal democracy. These effects, combined with the Homeland War (1990-1995), were major transformative elements for Croatian news. They, however, were merely the start. The impact of the free media market, globalization and trans-nationalism, as well as innovations brought on by the digital technological revolution all must be considered too. Not only did the media and media text change over time, the structure of TV news changed as well. With this perspective in mind, this study examines television news text, sound and picture that make up the prime-time news on Croatian public service television HTV for the period 1991 to 2006. As a cross-reference, this study also examined the newscasts on national Croatian commercial television stations Nova TV and RTL, between 2005 and 2006. As well, this examination identifies and categorizes the myths and mythical structures that news is based on and through which television mediates everyday life in Croatia. This study shows that narratives and mythical structures are constitutive elements in Croatian prime-time television news programs and confirms that over time the news increased its use of narratives. Further, the respective mythical structures have greater or lesser importance depending on the sociopolitical and economic contexts of a given period.

narratives; mythical structures; television in Croatia; television news; television text; public service television

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