Role of the Media and the Internet as Tools for Creating Accountability to Poor and Disadvantaged Groups

Media outlets in the former Yugoslavia, although relatively numerous for the country of 22 million people, were almost completely run and controlled by the state institutions in early 1990s, when the break of the ex-communist federation started. Thus, it was hardly a big surprise that the media, both electronic and written outlets, have become the main tools of the regimes’ propaganda in all the former Yugoslav republics during almost a decade of ongoing armed conflicts. As the communist regime collapsed in 1990, nationalist parties that emerged as the strongest and the most influential forces in republics of former Yugoslavia won power and therefore took over control of the key media, unprepared at the time to transform into independent and free media.