The Narrative, Discourse and Terminology of the Western Balkans Online Media Reporting on the Russia-Ukraine War

Abstract

Reporting by various media on armed conflicts produce news about the events from both the frontlines and the country a war takes place. Given that reporting from war zones has changed and that many media outlets do not even send their journalists to cover the fighting on the ground but opt for citing news agencies, the social media, or the local media, we bear out that reporting from the Russian-Ukraine war constitutes a mixed journalism between that of war and peace. The narrative, discourse, and terminology used by the Western Balkans online media in Albanian, Serbian, and Macedonian, differ depending on the language and the country that the certain media operate. The content provided in the body of articles is less striking than of what appears in the headlines of the same news items, meaning that online media tend to prioritize sensationalism and that the reporting strategy in essence reduces the quality of the media narrative and discourse. The results of our research highlight the importance of telling between different types of conflict frames omnipresent in the online media reporting contexts.