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Our Media, Our Democracy, Our Future. The Future of the Media in the Western Balkans and Turkey – Facts and Trends. Regional Overview
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Sanela Hodžic, Sandra B. Hrvatin

Sarajevo; Ljubljana: Mediacentar;Peace Institute;South East European Network for Professionalization of Media (SEENPM) (2025), 57 pp.

"The results of the research conducted in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey suggest that the key determinants for the future of our media and democracies are the following: • The poor socio-economic status of journalists and their exposure to ... pressure and attacks, coupled with modest support mechanisms, cripple the ability of journalists to promote the public interest, report on key issues of public interest, and hold power to account. In the most extreme cases, the pressure involves imprisonment, interrogation, surveillance, and lawsuits aimed at silencing journalists. • The lack of consistent monitoring and registration of cases of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) in the region, with dozens of lawsuits against journalists filed by political officials and their affiliates. • A growing number or media outlets, but a declining number of journalism students, highlighting concerns about the future shrinking of staff numbers in media newsrooms and about the growing automatization of journalism. The most drastic drop was in North Macedonia, with the number of journalism students in 2023 amounting to only 11% of the number from ten years ago and 50% of the number from 2000. • The number of media outlets is growing, mostly in the online sector, while print media outlets are becoming increasingly endemic. • A worrying trend of overt concentration of media ownership in the hands of a few media conglomerates, often tied to national or foreign governments, that takes a toll on media freedom and pluralism. • The dominant instrumentalization (through ownership and funding) of media (including private and public) for particular political and/or business interests limits the space for editorial independence and integrity. • Non-profit media are still a rarity in the region, with only a few non-profit radio broadcasters in some countries, and an unknown number of online platforms of civil society organizations with a community-focused mission. • Lack of transparency of the media sector, particularly a lack of accessible and reliable information concerning the media industry and the media market. • Advertising is the main source of revenues in the media sector, with the total revenues ranging between EUR 12 million in Montenegro and over EUR 4 billion in Turkey. • Although it is declining, the TV sector is still dominant in terms of its share of advertising revenues, while social media’s share is increasing, and in Turkey it amounts to as much as 45.7% of advertising revenues. • The tech giants such as Google and Meta are an increasingly dominant competitor for media outlets in the region, jeopardizing the future sustainability of national and local media outlets and potentially curbing political pluralism in public communication. • Public funding for the media, including funding of public broadcasters (declining in four out of seven countries), grants, and subsidies for media outlets and government advertising, amounts to several to dozens of millions of euros per country, taking up an important share of media revenues, but without proactive transparency, effective guarantees of editorial independence, well-defined purpose and evaluation, the opportunities to make public funding for the media an important instrument of media democratization remain under-used. • The representation of different age, gender, ethnic, religious, and other groups in media content and in the newsrooms’ staff is limited. In multiethnic communities some policies promote ethnic diversity of media content, while other identity axes are largely neglected and pluralism in public communication is very limited. Women are an important, and in many countries even dominant, workforce in the media, but remain underrepresented in managerial posts." (Executive summary) more

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Mobilization for Protecting the Public Interest in the Media: Mapping Good Practices of Media Activism

Sanela Hodžic

Sarajevo; Ljubljana: Mediacentar;Peace Institute (2024), 51 pp.

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Media Trust in the Western Balkans: Together Apart. Regional Overview

Sandra B. Hrvatin, Brankica Petkovic, Sanela Hodžic

Ljubljana: Peace Institute;South East European Network for Professionalization of Media (SEENPM) (2021), 34 pp.

"Trust in the media varies across the region, with citizens in BiH, Serbia and North Macedonia divided in around half of those that trust and half of those that distrust the media, and a higher number of citizens in Kosovo, Montenegro and Albania having trust in the media. The highest trust is expre ... more

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Hate Narratives in the Western Balkans and Turkey

Sandra B. Hrvatin, Sanela Hodzic Brankica Petkovic

Ljubljana: Peace Institute (2021), 29 pp.

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Sustainability of Professional Journalism in the Media Business Environment of the Western Balkans

Sanela Hodžic, Brankica Petkovic

European Union;TACSO 3 project;GDSI (2020), 54 pp.

"Independent media outlets in the Western Balkans are facing major challenges to their financial sustainability. With the exception of some of the largest broadcasters with national coverage and the most visited online media, the majority of media outlets across the region are not sustainable busine ... more

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Journalism in Times of Crisis: Case Studies in Six SEE Countries

Sanela Hodžic

South East European Network for Professionalization of Media (SEENPM) (2017), 33 pp.

"This research project focuses on media reporting of and in crisis situations, with case studies of examples mostly from 2016. Political and social crises have been recurring in recent years, aggravated by unstable political environments, underdeveloped economies, ethno-national divisions and unreso ... more

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Communicating Citizens' Protests, Requiring Public Accountability: Case Studies from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia

Sanela Hodžic, Mojca Pajnik (eds.)

Sarajevo: Mediacentar (2016), 384 pp.

"In the recent years, we have witnessed several protests, initiatives and social uprisings in the SEE region, through which the citizens demanded for government accountability, suggested better policy solutions and promoted better citizen participation. Regional research “Communicating citizens' p ... more

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State-Media Financial Relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Increasingly Dependent and Disciplined Media

Sanela Hodžic

Ljubljana: Peace Institute;South East European Media Observatory (2015), 20 pp.

"Particular political and business interests seem to overpower any notion of public interest in the financial relations between government and the media. The public interest that these financial patterns should in theory serve remains under-articulated and unmonitored with a lack of clear criteria, ... more

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Opfer der Geschäftswelt und politischer Interessen: Medien in Bosnien-Herzegowina

Sanela Hodžic

Religion & Gesellschaft in Ost und West, volume 43, issue 10 (2015), pp. 22-25

"Trotz der hohen Standards der Mediengesetze in Bosnien-Herzegowina hapert es bei deren Umsetzung. Medienschaffende sind häufig dem Druck von Politik, staatlichen Institutionen und einflussreichen Unternehmen ausgesetzt. Viele Medienunternehmen sind aufgrund ihrer desolaten Finanzlage zusätzlich f ... more

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Medien, Geld und Freiheit

Religion & Gesellschaft in Ost und West, volume 43, issue 10 (2015), pp. 1-27

"Das Fazit der Beiträge in diesem Heft bringt Snežana Milivojevic nüchtern auf den Punkt: „Der Glaube, dass ein freier Markt gleichbedeutend mit freien Medien ist, hat sich in den Transformationsländern als Illusion erwiesen.“ Die größte Gefahr für unabhängigen Journalismus liegt dort ni ... more

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Untold Stories: How Corruption and Conflicts of Interest Stalk the Newsroom
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London: Ethical Journalism Network (EJN) (2015), v, 82 pp.

"This report, which has been produced by a group of distinguished journalists and their supporters, examines the broad scope of the crisis. It covers countries where media are on the frontline of tough political battles, such as Egypt and Turkey. In Ukraine, for instance, the practice of paid-for jo ... urnalism is a tool routinely used by politicians at election time. The same is true in India. In other countries, including Nigeria, Philippines, and Colombia the precarious working conditions of news staff provide fertile conditions for corruption and “brown envelopes” or under-the-table cash payments to reporters and editors which are a routine feature of journalistic work. The struggles facing journalists in settled democracies, such as the United Kingdom and Denmark, are less brazen, but no less challenging and in a range of countries across the Western Balkans with a shared and painful history, media corruption hinders aspirations to break free from the legacy of war, censorship and political control during decades of communist rule. The story is of an uphill struggle. Everywhere there is a crisis of confidence inside newsrooms caused by crumbling levels of commitment to ethics, a lowering of the status of journalistic work and a pervasive lack of transparency over advertising, ownership and corporate and political affiliations. Government control over lucrative state advertising, which is often allocated to media according to their political bias, remains widespread. At the same time, the elimination in most countries of the invisible wall separating editorial and advertising has created a surge of so-called “native advertising,” hidden advertorials and paid-for journalism. It was this conflict of interest that plunged the crisis-prone UK press into a new bout of handwringing in February 2015 when Peter Oborne, a leading political journalist, quit his job at the Daily Telegraph accusing the management of censoring stories about HSBC bank, a leading advertiser caught up in a tax scandal. These reports tell essentially the same story of deep cuts in editorial investment, undue pressure on newsrooms, and media increasingly dependent upon atypical models of ownership in which media have become the trophy possessions of powerful figures and institutions in pursuit of wider corporate and political objectives." (Introduction, page iii-iv) more

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The Trust Factor: An EJN Review of Journalism and Self-Regulation
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Aidan White (ed.)

London: Ethical Journalism Network (EJN) (2015), 72 pp.

"This report examines self-regulation in challenging times. Journalism is increasingly a single stream of information disseminated simultaneously across different platforms of media, but its regulation remains dominated by old-fashioned notions of how media work. Usually there are two ways of regula ... more

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Media Integrity Matters: Reclaiming Public Service Values in Media and Journalism

Brankica Petkovic, Jovana Mihajlovic Trbovc (eds.)

Sandra B. Hrvatin Contrib.;Londo, Ilda;Hodžic, Sanela;Popovic, Helena;Trpevska, Snežana;Micevski, Igor;Matic, Jovanka;Valic Nedeljkovic, Dubravka

Ljubljana: Peace Institute;South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) (2014), 445 pp.

"This book is an attempt to address obstacles to a democratic development of media systems in the countries of South East Europe by mapping patterns of corrupt relations and practices in media policy development, media ownership and financing, public service broadcasting, and journalism as a profess ... more

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Hate Speech in Online Media in South East Europe

Remzi Lani (ed.)

Tirana: Albanian Media Institute (2014), 199 pp.

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Media and National Ideologies: Analysis and Reporting on War Crime Trials in the Former Yugoslavia

Amer Dzihana, Zala Volcic (eds.)

Sarajevo: Mediacentar (2011), 284 pp.

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Under Pressure: Research Report on the State of Media Freedom in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Sanela Hodžic

Sarajevo: Mediacentar (2010), 44 pp.

Our Media, Our Democracy, Our Future. The Future of the Media in the Western Balkans and Turkey – Facts and Trends. Regional Overview Top Insights

Untold Stories: How Corruption and Conflicts of Interest Stalk the Newsroom Top Insights

The Trust Factor: An EJN Review of Journalism and Self-Regulation Top Insights

Our Media, Our Democracy, Our Future. The Future of the Media in the Western Balkans and Turkey – Facts and Trends. Regional Overview
Top Insights

Untold Stories: How Corruption and Conflicts of Interest Stalk the Newsroom
Top Insights

The Trust Factor: An EJN Review of Journalism and Self-Regulation
Top Insights