Snježana Milivojević: New autocracies are based more on controlling information and influencing consciousness than on brutal repression.

The profile of an average domestic media consumer in 2025 is difficult to construct.

Based on data from the latest research by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, it appears to be a very complex figure.

This person watches television for more than five hours a day (significantly above the global average) and then turns to social media for information (more than other Europeans).

They follow media they do not trust.

At the end of the day, they claim that all the while they are actually – avoiding the news.

“The average person in Serbia is low in media literacy, apathetic, and trusts no one. This is a person with shattered trust in the media, who spends hours consuming content that is mostly not news,” says Snježana Milivojević, a former professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade.

“In my opinion, this audience spends hours watching, for example, morning programs on Pink and afternoon discussions on Hepi. This boosts viewership. So, they watch a lot, but they do not watch the news, which makes them susceptible to manipulation.”

Milivojević explains to Cenzolovka how the media system in Serbia is under political control and what has changed on the domestic scene since the tragedy in Novi Sad and the beginning of student protests.

Cenzolovka: When we look at the habits of the domestic audience in the research you participated in, it seems that they are hard to fit together. How do you explain that? Are the numbers you arrived at a reflection of significant polarization among us, are we all collectively confused? Or is it something completely different?

Snježana Milivojević: You are right that it is partly a consequence of significant polarization. In such societies, populist leaders encourage media consumption that clearly divides people into users of one or the other media. There is no longer a system of mainstream media; it has been shattered. This is a result of the autocratic capture of the media.

No one trusts anyone anymore. Even traditionally popular media with large circulations are not trusted. The reality is that critical media are trusted by more people than consume them. Meanwhile, those who do consume these other media trust them less. They watch but do not believe them.

Our specificity is that television is watched for long periods, while newspapers are read little. We have these lengthy programs that sell a ‘worldview’ and where everything and anything is debated: the war in Ukraine, the American elections, Kosjerić, Gaza, Srebrenica. People do not come to get informed; they instead ‘purchase’ hours of viewing lengthy programs.

Avoiding the News

Cenzolovka: So, television is watched, but information is not sought. The level of news avoidance in Serbia is above the global average: 46% of respondents say they occasionally avoid the news?

Milivojević: In Serbia, this is a kind of self-defense, as we are bombarded with such a quantity of information that everyone starts to flee. Fundamental distrust in media has been sown.

Ultimately, in something we could call the ‘attention economy,’ viewers punish the media with the only thing they have – they withdraw their attention. They flee from the news. We are a textbook example of this.

Cenzolovka: What is your impression? Are we really avoiding the news, or is it sometimes desirable to say so? In other words: have we been trained to see politics as something dirty to be avoided? To say: ‘I don’t read the newspapers’ – Aleksej Kišjuhas writes about bashmebriggism – and create an appearance of cleanliness?

Milivojević: I believe people are really fleeing. First, because it is a global trend: around 40% of respondents have stated for several years that they selectively avoid news. There are very few who avoid all news, just a few percent. However, a large number of people consciously selectively avoid news, considering it negative, irrelevant, and spreading fear of the ‘big bad world.’

The second decade of this century is the one in which we are actually withdrawing our attention, unlike the first decade, where we were all constantly online seeking as much information as possible. Now, there is a growing critical resistance to that.

Cenzolovka: Lack of interest in news… We thought this was characteristic of the young. Students in blockade have shown – you write about this too – how social networks can be a source of information on topics that public services cannot (cannot, do not want to). How much did the students surprise you?

Milivojević: I am not surprised by their media literacy. This is a generation that has grown up with social networks and that is their first media environment. Perhaps it is surprising how quickly the migration of the entire population to online platforms has progressed.

Our research was conducted in January and February, when the protests were in full swing. Since mainstream media had censored the protests – particularly RTS at that time – and people knew that something important and significant was happening in society, I believe this has prompted many to make social media their primary source of news.

Young people not only led communication online; they also pulled a significant number of older people to ‘migrate’ and divert their attention from traditional media. This, I assume, is a reflex to such large and dramatic changes. In this case, the trust that students developed and gained in society transferred to the communication in which they participated online.

REM IS A KEY CONTROL POINT

Cenzolovka: You speak about the regulatory system. Events have coincidentally aligned in a strange way. The wave of mass student and civic protests was initiated just as the country was left without the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media (REM)?

Milivojević: Before that, REM had been dormant for a year, and even before that, it was actively working on the destruction of the media system. I believe the authorities are in no rush to select a new composition for the REM Council. They can repeat the process multiple times, insisting that it always be party loyalists or people close to the authorities.

The regulator is a key control point, although it is hard to say that in a shattered system it can do everything or much. There is none of that here. There is no one with the authority to say: you cannot lie, destroy people's careers, invite war criminals as guests, promote conspiracy theories, spread hate speech.

New Wave Autocracies Based on Information Control and Influence on Consciousness

Cenzolovka: Lately, one of the most frequently stated phrases – at least in Novi Sad – is that from November 1st, nothing is the same anymore. How much has the audience in the country changed, and how much have the media changed since that unfortunate awning fell at the Railway Station?

Milivojević: This is really an exceptional situation, even for us who are used to crisis and abnormal periods. There are truly significant changes occurring in the way public communication is conducted.

In more closed systems with a shorter tradition of critical media, most people turn to online platforms thinking there is no censorship there. They avoid information control or at least that type of control they are accustomed to in traditional media, where the authorities control everything from content to distribution. This feeling, or ‘illusion of freedom,’ leads many away from traditional media.

New wave autocracies are not based so much on brutal force and repression, but much more on information control and influence on consciousness. Media play a crucial role here. This is the reason, firstly, why control is so centralized, and secondly, why trust in critical media is undermined, if they cannot be completely shut down. This is the environment that has been escalating here since November 1st.

We have seen this through various strategies of ignoring protests in leading and most popular media, those close to the authorities. It is also evident in attacks on journalists and media houses, in undermining their financial strength, and in the dismantling of the regulatory system.

Cenzolovka: You have written that the media market in Serbia is – oversaturated, poorly regulated, and under strong political control. In what ways is the market controlled?

Milivojević: It is said that polarization exists in other countries as well, that there is economic conditioning, that large corporations do not want a conflict with the authorities. This is all true, but in some other countries, there is at least an institution or laws that are relatively neutral places and guarantee the functioning of the system.

What we have been talking about so far is a channel of political control. The other channel is financial. The authorities centralize public funds. In such systems, the media largely depend on that money. The public service is funded where many influences intersect. Additionally, the state is a major advertiser. This area is not regulated, and the state can inject vast amounts of money into compliant media.

Under the guise of the abundance of those thousands of media we have, pluralism is actually stifled.

Source: Cenzolovka