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Authors: Damir Nikočević, Danijel Radević, Jelena Mijanović, Jelena Jovanović Marović, Dejana Ponoš, Vesna Rajković Nenadić Radoš Mušović
Publishing year: 2020
The recently concluded parliamentary elections in Montenegro have brought a series of specificities to the election campaign. Instead of party rallies and door-to-door campaigns, the election race has largely shifted to traditional and new media. Thus, share and like have become a dominant feature of that competition, which was coloured by identity issues and emotional charge. In such an environment, the electoral lists marginalized specific economic programmes, issues of living standard of citizens, specific measures to combat corruption and fight against organized crime, and many other important topics. The two opposing narratives of “endangerment of the state” and “defence of the shrines” have suppressed also both the global threat of the COVID 19 virus pandemic and the worrying economic perspective.
The media scene in Montenegro is deeply polarized and this rift is reflected in media coverage of the activities of political entities. Perhaps the most noticeable one daily was via front pages of the printed media, which were almost fan-edited. There was almost no media that reported neutrally and objectively on a certain electoral list, excluding the minority parties towards which a special kind of sensibility was expressed.
The report is a part of the project „SPINoFACT – monitoring of the parliamentary elections in Montenegro in 2020“, which is conducted by the Centre for Civic Education(CCE) with the support of the Embassy of the United Kingdom in Montenegro.