MEDIA DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE 2016 ELECTION COVERAGE IN THE NEWS PROGRAMS OF RADIO AND TELEVISION OF VOJVODINA

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show how the provincial public service, in its news programs on both radio and television – Novosti and Dnevnik , reported on political activities during the election campaign in April 2016. The corpus of this paper is six news programs (three radio programs and three television news programs) that is, 46 stories in which the participants of the campaign were mentioned. Quantitative and qualitative analyses comprise all the stories which were a part of the election coverage, as well as the stories which were not a part of the coverage, but whose actors were politicians. A separate part of this research is the marking of the so-called hidden political marketing that is, the abuse of political power during the campaign. The analysis of the simple random sample of the news programs broadcast on the 13^th, 14^th , 20^th and 21^st  April 2016 showed that the journalists of the provincial public service reported professionally about the participants of the election campaign. However, outside the election coverage, the advantage was given to the parties which were in power at the state level, although they criticized the reporting of the Radio and television of Vojvodina, claiming that they gave advantage to the parties in power at the provincial level.