Political Exploitation of the Symbol of Suffering in the Past Bosnia and Herzegovina War

Abstract

Reminder of the victims, innocent casualties of the past Bosnian- Herzegovinian war, crimes, and atrocities during that period, are a daily occurrence in the media space of post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina. The level of mutual disregard is illustratively evidenced by the ways in which the role of the opposing side in the tragic events is presented, often implying a threat from the other side and ill intentions. In this paper, among other things, the aim is to determine the level and nature of media representation of symbols of suffering in the past war on certain news portals in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and, indirectly, to indicate the nature of the analyzed content. The content of articles dedicated to this topic attempts to present the character of representing tragic events and answer the assumption that it involves the exploitation of tragic events from the war past to justify ethnonationalistic policies of isolationism, whether justified or unjustified. The escalation of ethnonationalistic hatred, fueled by continuous emphasis on the ethnicity’s vulnerability, spreads and sustains an atmosphere of fear, mistrust, and insecurity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The thanatopolitics of the post-Dayton ethnonationalistic political corpus largely denies the right of others to be a victim and, in that sense, is identical for all political options that declare, in nominal and functional terms, themselves national. Using inductive and deductive methods, critical methods focused on contextual understanding, qualitative and quantitative content analysis, this study aims to diagnose the way thanatological content is presented and suggest its role in the political system of post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina.