21st Century Media and Communications

1-6

Authors: Editorial Board

Table of Contents: Theme of the Volume: Media Systems and Journalism Culture

22-32

Authors: Bisera Zankova

The article discusses the democratic changes in the Bulgarian society and the new regulatory system from the perspective of media and legal cultures. The article analyzes legal phenomena as such, as well as the social environment in which they have emerged and developed during the years of democratic transition. Law is a social regulator and has to serve the public interest. In Bulgaria, however, it has always been subject to the political will of the majorities and could not fulfill its function to provide the necessary basis for the establishment of democratic regulatory culture, management culture and culture of independence within the media.

39-48

Authors: Dilyana Toncheva

The article presents the main results of a quantitative content analysis of Mir newspaper for the period 1919‒1944. A total of 151 articles were analyzed. The study aims to shed light on how the periodical, defined as the Bulgarian Times (a quality bourgeois newspaper), presents five main thematic areas in order to provide a clearer picture of the Bulgarian press and journalistic culture during the period under review.

55-63

Authors: Kalin Kalinov

The article investigates the concept of trust as a factor for success in public diplomacy initiatives. It explores the field through the theoretical frame of persuasive communication. First, the evolution and connotations of the term trust are examined through a broad theoretical review. Subsequently, the applications and the meaning of the phenomenon in the field of public diplomacy are analyzed. The article probes into an academic debate which has been mostly neglected by the Bulgarian scientific community. It relates to increasing the effectiveness of diplomatic actions in the public sphere by strengthening the trust in the legitimate communicator. The presented theoretical perspectives can be relevant to researchers and practitioners alike.

74-82

Authors: Ralitsa Kovacheva

The article presents the results of an empirical study based on data from a written exam among 85 second-year students of Journalism at the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication of the St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia. The study aims to illustrate the approaches and strategies used by students in dealing with a specific media message and, particularly, the possibility of satirical news-like texts to be perceived as fake news. Nearly 70% of the students defined a publication on a website called “No! News” as fake news, even though it is a well-known satirical website. The article discusses the students’ views on the concept of fake news, as well as differences between satire and fake news by making comparisons with existing research on the subject.

99-104

Authors: Alexander Hristov

The current text focuses on the need to reconsider the understanding of the efficiency of PR activities and to include the impact on sales in it. It is considered that the current situation in the publicity sphere worldwide is very dynamic and specific, and therefore this development enlarges the opportunities. Bearing in mind more direct contact, the efficiency in terms of sales should not be neglected. In this situation, the understanding and the role of advertorials as a communication tool can be reconsidered as well.

107-108

Authors: Editorial Board

Guidelines for Authors

1-6

Authors: Editorial Board

Table of Contents: Theme of the Volume: Media and Business

16-33

Authors: Ivo Indzhov

The study seeks an answer to the current problem of the deepening global crisis of classic media business models in the digital age and the need to seek sustainable new forms of financing. This state of the journalistic media, resp. of quality journalism is the result of competition from the Internet and major online platforms, but also from acute financial crises, the most recent one caused by Covid-19. They hit the two market foundations of the media company the hardest – advertising and sales. Financially afflicted media repel citizens and are a direct threat to democracy. Weakened, they fall under external dependence, and cannot control the politicians and those in power; neither can they oppose the viral spread of misinformation and fake news on social media. The main research question is “Is it possible – and in what way – to save the media financially in the digital age?” 13 current media-financing models with an emphasis on digital media have been studied - beyond advertising, classified ads etc., which until recently ensured the well-being of the press and television. Two different media business models were also considered: taz – a successful German left-wing alternative newspaper based on cooperative ownership and a solidary model of attracting readers, and “Capital” – a Bulgarian business-oriented medium that successfully applies new forms of financing. Both editions focus on digital transition. The elements of comparison show that for several reasons the “taz model”, which provides a much more direct and emotional connection with the readership, is not applicable to Bulgaria in the medium term. The main conclusion of the study is that in order to survive in the digital age, journalistic media must have a flexible pluralistic funding model. Depending on the nature of the media, its target groups and the specifics of society, it may contain only part or a wider range of the following main sources of funding: market; state / public funding; structures of civil society and citizens.

47-55

Authors: Ivanka Mavrodieva

The article aims to introduce to the readers the features of fake news, basing itself on theoretical observation. Another goal is to determine if there are grounds to claim that there is creation, broadcasting and distribution of fake content. Some methods for spotting, detecting, recognizing and neutralizing fake news are presented briefly. The relation between fake news and post-truth are described as well. The article also presents examples of fake news regarding the Coronavirus crisis (COVID-19) selected from media, online media and social networks in Bulgaria. Lastly, the article highlights the arguments used while presenting information regarding the plan to overcome the crisis and the prevention of spreading fake news.

70-81

Authors: Stefan Serezliev

The COVID-19 pandemic has seriously shaken the foundations of modern brand management. The first reaction of communication specialists was to look for ways to optimize communication messages during a crisis, but is that enough? The author explores the possibilities for complete restructuring of the modern brand – i.e. brand positioning, mission and vision of the brand during such complex crises. Is it possible to talk about a new type of Post-truth? The article aims to establish some of its characteristics.

88-96

Authors: Waldemar Żak

Migration is an objective process that promotes the global development and integration. At the same time, migration contains a lot of contradictions, the chief being the problem of social inclusion of one group and exclusion of another. Thus, migration is a process that has a strong potential for conflict. Modern mass media play a key role in this migration process. Media construct images of social groups and thus influence the formation of tolerant or intolerant attitudes in the society. In the media discourse, we can observe the cyclic arousing of the atmosphere of increased social anxiety and the focus of media attention on events defined as significant social problems. There are two discourse models of the migration process in mass media: the model of migration crisis (subjects of discourse are locals, journalists and authorities) and the model of pragmatic tolerance (subjects of discourse are employers and authorities). The article presents an analysis of the media discourse regarding the refugee crisis in terms of the structure of arguments and narratives of the parties involved in the media discussion. The aim of this article is to reconstruct the debate strategies appearing in the Polish media discourse concerning the problem of migration. The migration crisis of 2015 in Europe, and the accompanying media panic, have drastically changed the prevailing image of refugees among Polish people from stable positive to clearly negative. The Polish weekly magazines covers were analysed. This procedure enabled to recognise the argumentative strategies which had been applied in researched weekly magazines and to describe the differences between them when it comes to developing the migration problem. Extreme opinions are clearly seen particularly in Polish weekly magazines a cyberspace. Analyses of the „key moments” in the media discourse (fear, cursory knowledge of the foreign culture, emotionality, unreliable press reports, aggression towards Europeans, statements of politicians) facilitated the recreation of the phenomenon of media’s creating social fear around the subject of the migration crisis, and pointed to the nature of its irrationality, characteristic of moral panic. In an attempt to answer the question whether the media reporting on the problem of immigration create an effect of “simulated reality,” the author refers to rhetorical aspects of constructing images with persuasive features.

99-100

Authors: Editorial Board

Guidelines for authors

1-6

Authors: Editorial board

Table of Contents: Theme of the Volume: Journalism and PR Models of Interaction

17-21

Authors: Alexander Hristov

The text examines the main directions of contemporary interactions between PR and journalism in the country, which are leading to media content creation. In this context it is maintained that both journalism and PR activities can contribute to the creation of media content. Of course, at some point they compete with each other to achieve this goal, but good media content is achieved not only as a result of this competition, but also from the interaction between them.

28-33

Authors: Ivana Stojanovič, Prelevič Tatjana Ðukič

In this paper the authors use the comparative method to analyze differences and similarities between basic ethical principles of the Serbian Journalists’ Code of Ethics and the Code of Professional Ethics of the Serbian Public Relations Association. The authors examine whether the interests of PR and journalist professions have to conflict as is usually thought, or they can be both used as a means of informing the citizens, as Philip Patterson believes. In this paper, the theoretical perspectives of Denis Everett and John Merrill are also taken into account. They state that the media is guided by profit, while the public interest, true information and ethics are secondary.

41-48

Authors: Andrzej Nowosad

Clusters mean collaboration, knowledge, trust in individual public units which gives better results than the sum of the different activities of the same units. The media play a major role in building social capital. The aim of this study is to analyze the Balkan countries in the field of media clusters, showing the leading role of Romania and Bulgaria.

57-65

Authors: Bogomil Kalinov

The terms and conditions for using social platforms and the Internet grow more complex as governments struggle to provide instruments that avoid employing censorship techniques to revoke free speech, but at the same time provide online users with a safe environment and shelter from experiencing abuse or aggressive behavior. This ethical dilemma has apparently split Europe into two contradicting schools of thought. In July 2017 a search to identify relevant publications on the topic of online moral disagreement was conducted on the “Communication and Mass Media Complete” electronic database. The objective of the search was to find articles related to the topic, published in English between 2015 and 2018 with access to the full text. This systematic literature review is the final product of the materials found.

72-73

Authors: Editorial board

Contributors to the Issue

3-6

Authors: Editorial board

Table of Content. Theme of the Volume: Media and Post-Truth

17-23

Authors: Stefan Sezerliev

Post-truth and emotional branding are constantly criticized, the main argument being the creation of emotional pressure in the decision-making process. This is also cited as a prerequisite for fake news, rumours, political lies etc. Can we get out of this frame and look for new intersections of post-truth and emotional branding? Perhaps this would be a way of humanizing post-truth for the benefit of society and reducing brand populism.

31-40

Authors: Khristina Khristova

The paper examines the impact of fake news on the relationship between companies and their strategic audiences. The text is structured into two parts. The focus in the first part is on the structure of corporate communications and the model of successful corporate policy presented as a projection of the idea of the business of trust. The second part highlights the main aspects of the development of the cosmetic giant „L’Oreal”, which has preserved its image as a strong brand and an ethical company in the conditions of hypercompetitiveness and fake news. The study is based on Van Rieland Fombrun’s theory of corporate communications as a polyfunctional concept and on Kotler’s idea of market-oriented strategic planning, providing an advantage to firms in situations of risk and dynamic social transformations.

48-60

Authors: Ivo Indjov

The paper discusses the possibilities of countering fake news in Bulgarian media with the instruments of media law, regulation, self-regulation and co-regulation. The study has reached the following important conclusions: 1. The laws are inadequate to the new challenge. There are temptations to fight it through the Criminal Code or a special law that can turn the prosecution service into a repressive media supervisor. 2. The State can contribute to curbing disinformation in the media by highlighting their ownership and funding. 3. The ethical codes oblige journalists to be responsible to society, but self-regulation is de-legitimized by the division in the guild. The solution lies in the development of co-regulation: the state stimulates the media by setting a condition for advertising in them: that they should agree on one code and that their ethics committee should be able to penalize them financially for fake news.

72-79

Authors: Andreana Eftimova

In connection with the frequent breach of P. Grice’s maxim about truth, the paper seeks answers to the questions of whether Bulgarians recognize the unreliable information in the media and what is the role of linguistic means in the process of interpreting the truth of the messages. The paper also comments on the results of an experiment aimed at verifying the role of three groups of language tools in forming a sense of reliability or unreliability of journalistic information among recipients.

85-90

Authors: Mariya Nikolova

The paper outlines some of the challenges that PR experts are facing in their work in the so-called „Fake News Era”, dominated by misinformation and the need for verifying the facts published in social and traditional media. The main thesis of Gьnter Bentele’s theory of public trust is used to frame the basic idea about the lack of trust in the media in general. Some of his conclusions drawn in the 1990s, are similar to the results summarized today by two reports: Cision’s „State of the Media Report” (2017) and Edelman’s „Trust Barometer” (2017). The paper also presents a few case studies, related to the distribution of fake news that damage the prestige and the reputation of the affected companies (Pepsi Co, New Balance, Ferrero Croup). It poses the question about the extent to which we can talk about corporate communication management and strategies in the post-truth era and whether it would be more appropriate to include a Rumor Management strategy in the corporate communication strategy arsenal when a corporation needs to react to a piece of fake news in the post-truth era.

98-99

Authors: Editorial board

Authors in this Issue

2-6

Authors: Editorial board

Table of contents. Theme of the Volume: Media and Elections

12-18

Authors: Stefan Sezerliev

Nowadays, the brand is becoming a mantra that guarantees success and sustainable prosperity within broad limits and categories: commercial, political, sports, religious, tourism, urban, regional, state.In this study, the author aims to conceptualise the contemporary crisis of the brand narrative in the field of political brand and branding. The focus of the analysis is the correlation between different approaches in modern brand management in the context of political brands. The purpose is to discover the causes of the crisis in the political brand narrative in the perspective of the successful development of the political brand.

27-33

Authors: Zoran Jevtovic, Zoran Aracki

With the arrival of the information revolution, the methods, techniques and skills of the journalist profession have rapidly changed, which has resulted in the creation of the new identity of the public communications. Media become new totems, sources of powerful, usually manipulative messages, which explains all political, historical and cultural phenomenons of the past and present. Fetishizing of items, easy profit and individual money-making, wrecked conventional notions of tradition and spirit of time, thus offering a variety of short-lasting, frivolous, sensational, tabloid and kitschy (trashy) pleasures, using their fascinating pictures and treacherous contents to attract people’s attention. In a multitude of high technology elites people have become more and more alienated, while mass media take over distribution of social power pouring consumers every day with new packages of spectacle and sensations. The Democracy waves today are flooding the planet, creating dramatic and intensive changes on an evolutionary political path. Exciting statistic triumph of neoliberal order excite the humanistic orientated part of our planet, but, behind the democracy screen, human rights and economic welfare are hiding lots of social problems, important for further concept of political development (an energetic and ecological crisis, stock market problems worldwide, first signs of planetary recession, growing unemployment…). The catalog of modern crisis depends on many agents which can decide whether the new established democracy will survive the numerous illnesses that attack it. An increasing number of contemporary intellectuals are discussing the issue of democracy future, facing the ethical dilemmas coming from the more frequent information manipulation, done by a more and more alienated governing elite. Multiculturalism is being put on a global market pedestal of ideas and opinions, and massmedia are being pushed forward as desirable tool for communication among everbody and about evertything. However, the problem lies in the fact that planetary media giants are avoiding information circulation among smaller ethical communities, commercially non-worthwhile and uninteresting, bringing to doubt the public debate concept. The new dogmatism is hidden in the shadow of the new world order, which is likely to lead towards creating self-sufficient, closed, ethnical or religious homogeneous groups, which by accepting the “victim” role, in the future will represent a suitable soil for unpredictable and painful political, religious, cultural and economic tectonic disturbances. New redistribution of power gives a stalwart role to cultural patterns, national identities, social conflicts and life styles, thus participating in reconfiguration of the traditional state which is naively trying to resist the changes, unwilling to relocate the cultural energy from state and bureaucratic cabinets to the open market or under favor of civilian society. Democratic culture implies the right for a variety of cultural values and models, lawfulness of national institutions and specific cultural identity

37-42

Authors: Valentina Bondzolova

The review deals with the linguistic features of print media advertising used in the presidential election campaign in 2016 as well as with the political slogans in it. Pre-election advertising is an important manifestation of political advertising, which serves the purpose of presenting the candidates and motivating the electorate. In connection with its characteristics attention is paid to the choice of linguistic means, most of all vocabulary, but also registered language game skills. Different adverts analyze the use of precedent texts, language game and style tinting, which, in parallel with the other emotional-expressive means, boost the effectiveness of the text.

60-67

Authors: Rayna Dushkova

The political campaign for the presidential and vice presidential election in the Republic of Bulgaria in October – November 2016 gives rise to research interest and is topical. The campaign discusses the messages of the candidates during their coverage in online media and social networks. Focus is placed on their disclosures in the media, as well as the specific political rhetoric on the part of the candidates regarding their opponents in the campaign. Based on a content analysis and using the descriptive approach, articles in the media and social networking publications are analyzed for the purpose of the specific study. The analysis aims to trace whether the specific disclosures for candidates remain as separate publications in a media or turn into political scandals that are effective enough to discredit a presidential and vice presidential candidate. It also aims to address the question of how much media attention is given to individual politicians, their characteristics and qualities, extracts from their biographies, or it focuses public attention on their political and management achievements. Do individual politicians have a key role and do they shun the parties, institutions and organizations from the focus of the media?

76-82

Authors: Anton Getsov

The subject of the paper is the inevitable, utilitarian and effective symbiosis between power and language, which is a main precondition for the conversion from „language of power” to „language power”. „Cryptic language” is the basic mechanism by which „language of power” systematically and creatively modifies itself into „language power”, and corruption of language becomes corruption by language. Thus, logical, deductive, and conceptual thinking are neglected at the expense of emotions, imagination and sensory activity. This mechanism is a function of skilful and permanent interaction between media discourse and political discourse. It is an indisputable and eloquent manifestation of one of the new functions of language – realization of a hidden and intentional manipulative influence on the feelings, adjustments, prejudices, beliefs, thinking, and ultimately – on the societal behaviour.

91-94

Authors: Gergana Kusheva

The paper presents the manipulative linguistic devices which the tabloids The Sun and The Daily Mirror use in the creation of the image of the British politician. The manipulative use of the proper names, the discrepancy between the real text and the headline, as well as the use of reported speech in the texts about British politicians are being analysed. The aim of the used manipulative devices is to derogate the reputation of the politician and to create a “parasocial interaction” with the reader.

99-104

Authors: Fani Mazdrashka-Mihova

The paper focuses on some peculiarities of media coverage of election campaigns in regional media. The main thesis is that there is less journalism in the media coverage of the election, with its rejection being voluntary and conscious, and the reasons for this are not exhausted with the popular ones about political dependencies. Consideration is also given to ways in which the media complies to or circumvents some legal requirements for tagging paid content.

112-118

Authors: Ivalinka Pencheva

The problems faced by an organisation are constant and their nature differs. The reasons for their occurrence may result from the external and internal organisational environment and their solution depends on the adequate behaviour of the management. The management decisions are very often based on managers’ intuition and subjective assessment of what is right and wrong. They are hastily taken and do not lead to concrete results. This is a common managerial error and public relations have a pertinent role in overcoming it. The present paper contributes to the improvement of the process of “elaborating a management decision” by performing the “Public Relations” managerial function. Thus, the problems from being a threat become an opportunity for improvement and achievement of organisational development.

123-126

Authors: Plamena Pencheva

Communication is an integral part of the management process. We find it as a prerequisite for the realization of optimal management, as part of the elements of organizational and management structure, as a means of implementing basic management functions, but it is also necessary in the implementation of the process of making management decisions. Сommunication also helps to implement leadership. Therefore, managers should endeavor to implement effective communication and its management.