Mediated Emotions in Political Communication Discourse: the Case of Montenegro and Serbia

Media literature is increasingly dominated by analyses that aim to reveal various forms of “empathetic media“ (Bakir and McStay 2018:154) characterized by emotional reporting. Emotional media language is frequently interpreted as manipulative and subjective, especially in the context of the post-truth era, which involves “facts that have no basis in reality (...)”(Berghel, 2017: 111). Emotional manipulation is supposed to lead towards media distrust (Fisher, 2016), and social anxiety (Tsipursky, 2017). Despite the growing academic interest in public discourse and emotions, we still have limited knowledge of media strategies that are used to provoke the emotional response in their audience. This research uses the concept of “mediated emotions“(Wahl-Jorgensen 2019, 8), which are strategically constructed through the media discourse. Even though the emotions and rationality are usually treated as opposites, I frame mediated emotions as purposeful and rational attempts to achieve pre-defined media goals with political communication discourse. This article aims to identify mediated emotions in political communication with the examples of Montenegro and Serbia. The two countries belong to the post-communist area with a long-term political influence on both private and public media (Vukovic 2017; Milutinovic 2017). Montenegro and Serbia have ethnical disputes initially related to the re-establishment of Montenegrin national identity and now extended to the religion. Identity issues always present a fruitful ground for biased media reporting. This is especially true for ethnic-based identity, which evokes “collective emotions“ (Lynggaard 2019, 1205). I investigate media articles published in four online media in Montenegro (IN4S and Pobjeda) and Serbia (Blic and Danas) which significantly differ in their editorial policy (Visnjic 2016). I apply the psychoanalytic narrative framework (PNF) (Skonieczny 2018; Solomon 2013; Lacan 1981) to media texts, to map the emotional discourse strategies that dominate in political communication. The psychoanalytic narrative approach begins with a presumption that individuals have a natural urge for belonging, which they never completely fulfill (Skonieczny 2018; Solomon 2013). This is why the media discourse tends to compensate for “(…) a subject’s desire for identification” (Skonieczny 2018, 64). The need for subject identification is particularly present in collective ethnicity-based emotions, which are usually found in political communication. The psychoanalytic approach, therefore, identifies specific forms of language, used to evoke collective belonging. The findings from this research contribute to the existing literature on media and emotions, as well as to the understudied PNF media analysis. Additionally, this article poses implications for a post-communist media area, which tends to experience revivification of ethnic cleavages. Finally, with the emotion-oriented analysis, this study has relevance for contemporary post-truth debates, which necessarily involve the usage of emotions.