Belgrade Pride Parade 2014.: Tabloidization and Parody of the Process of EU Integration

Abstract

Print Serbian media presented Belgrade Pride Parade 2014 in an ambivalent way - as a successful state project, on the one hand, and as a threat to the national security, on the other. Contradictory media discourse related to the promotion of human rights favored the tabloidization of almost all contents related to the Belgrade Pride Parade 2014.In this way in the focus of tabloidization was put wider cultural and social contexts including issues such as the process of EU integration, the effort of redefining national identity in the context of EU, and, finally, the very role of the LGBT community in organization of Belgrade Pride Parade. Tabloidization of the issue of EU integration was achieved mostly through indirect reporting on Belgrade Pride Parade by the combination of the articles which - in the same issue and often within the same section - reported on the Pride mutually quite contradictory for the audience, in sensationalist and confusing ways. The result of such reporting is, quite unexpectedly, the strategy of constant parody of topics which are declaratory considered to be policy priorities of Republic of Serbia while in the Serbian cultural and media practices are called into question and ridiculed. This kind of parody is based on a hidden affirmation of (in) equality and discrimination, as well as on the violation of journalistic ethics codes. The aim of the paper is to analyze – in the case of reporting on Belgrade Pride Parade 2014 - the narrative forms and the communication effects of this populist-based media parody, as well as to deconstructs its ideological reception and consequences.