Political leaders, media and authoritarianism in Croatia: the media strikes back?

This study focuses on the media representation of political leaders in Croatia, the newest Member State of the European Union, with an aim to capture the extent to which and ways in which political leaders have been portrayed in the media in periods characterised with varying degrees of illiberalism. A longitudinal content analysis of three daily newspapers from 1990 to 2018 reveals that in spite of the fact that media freedom decreased in the last decade, and the society became more authoritarian, there is little evidence to suggest that the press is increasingly demonstrating illiberal tendencies in the era of illiberal drift.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in East European Politics on 31/10/2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/21599165.2019.1684267.