‘Mapping’ the ‘Other’ in Television News on International Affairs: BBC’s ‘Pre-Accession’ Coverage of EU Membership Candidate Croatia
‘Mapping’ the ‘Other’ in Television News on International Affairs: BBC’s ‘Pre-Accession’ Coverage of EU Membership Candidate Croatia

Summary/Abstract: This is an enquiry into the ways in which the alleged ‘reality-transmitting’ television genre, namely the news, ‘maps’ ‘other’ cultures when the need to affirm a sense of belonging to a fragile supranational identity is provoked by a newcomers’ knock on the door. As the Croatian application for EU membership awaited the current members’ decision on the possible start of the membership negotiations, BBC television coverage brought to light the pertaining questions of the EU’s cultural boundaries, consequently (re)activating the classical East-West divide. In grasping the contours of such ‘mappings’, this study performs a close reading of selected television news stories on Croatia as cultural narratives, and deconstructs them in the light of the Balkanist discursive tradition. The analysis suggests that despite of (or, for the benefit of) the proclaimed credibility of the genre, the international news subject remains reduced to its particular Balkanist ‘otherness’, preserved in a self-sustaining visual ‘spectacle-ness’ of an EU candidate.

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