CULTURE, IDENTITY AND CITIZEN JOURNALISM IN…

UDC 316.722-027.6:[323.269:070(497.2)

CULTURE, IDENTITY AND CITIZEN JOURNALISM IN BULGARIAN ONLINE MEDIA Ivaylo Yoshkov University “St. Kliment Ohridski”,

Abstract: The present paper analyses the role of citizen II. HISTORY OF THE IMMIGRATION RELATED ISSUES journalism within the websites of traditional media. It IN BULGARIA focuses on the representations of culture and identity in terms of Russophilia and the ongoing immigration crisis. Although the incoming refugees from Syria cause The analysis is based on comments, which appear to be much concern and confrontations in Bulgarian society, the only form of citizen journalism within the selected websites. the country has managed to deal with much bigger immigrant issues in the past. Actually this is the 9-th Keywords: Russophile, Russophobe, refugees, immig- refugee crisis which Bulgaria faces in less than 140 ration, media years. The first refugee crisis was in 1878, right after the I. INTRODUCTION Bulgarian liberation from the Ottoman empire. Between 200 and 300 thousand people from the The ongoing political crisis in the country (after the Bulgarian territory, remaining within the Ottoman early resignation of 2 governments and the unstable empire, fled to the liberated part of the country. They majority in the current parliament) combined with the were accommodated at the houses, left behind by immigration issues caused by the immigrants from muslims, who were fleeing back to the Ottoman Syria and the issues in Ukraine caused much empire. In the effort to help these people the polarization in the society. The online media became government gave every family 300 hectares infield. the scene of many arguments between Russophiles The second crisis was in 1903 after the Ilinden and Russophobes, people who are tolerant to the uprising. More than 150 thousand people fled to immigrants and people who are not and etc. Studying Bulgaria. The government accommodated as much the citizen journalism is the best way to define this refugees as possible, but many were returned to their polarization using the society itself as an information homes. Some of these refugees later emigrated to source. Canada.

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After the Second Balkan War 350 thousand people III. RUSSOPHILES VS. RUSSOPHOBES IN BULGARIAN HISTORY immigrated to Bulgaria. The government decided again to them 300 hectares infields and whole new villages The controversy between Russophiles and Russop- were built. This situation was very similar right after hobes in Bulgaria has even longer history than the the First World War, when as much as 120 000 people immigration issues. The first Bulgarian author to men- fled to Bulgaria, and after the Second World War, when tion that the only hope for Bulgaria to be liberated from 60 000 people immigrated in Bulgaria. the Ottoman Empire is to stay close to Russia, was Paisyi In all of the above mentioned cases Bulgarian Hilendarski, widely known as the father of history as a people were emigrating in Bulgaria from territories science in Bulgaria. He worked in the 18th century and which remained within other countries’ borders after many researchers consider him to be the first influential wars or other conflicts. There were also 3 occasions in figure in Bulgaria with Russophile views. which foreign refugees fled to Bulgaria. After the Russo-Turkish war (1877-1878), which In 1896 between 15 and 20 thousand Armenians liberated Bulgaria from the Ottoman empire, began he fled from Istanbul, Odrin etc. and immigrated in first period of Russophile vs. Russophobes Bulgaria. A little more people (about 25 thousand) fled controversies in the country. Most were to Bulgaria after the Greek civil war (1946 – 1949). thankful for the help, provided by Russia for the The country accommodated them in specially build liberation of Bulgaria. The government was heavily apartments in Sofia. Much more refugees (about 120 influenced by Russia, which made many people think thousand) came to Bulgaria in 1923 after the defeat of that the government was not following strictly the Russian White guards. Most of them where highly Bulgarian interests. From this point onwards until the educated so they easily found jobs and had no troubles Second World War Bulgarian policy was principally settling down. (although not always visibly) russophobic. This is quite As we can see Bulgaria has faced refugee issues easy to explain, since the tsar’s dynasty originated from before. But no matter if the refugees were Bulgarian or Austria. Even in the Second World War Tsar Boris foreign people, the government and the people helped decided to take the side of Germany. them to settle down and have a decent life. As a result The communist party, which ruled the country after of this, most of the refugees got easily assimilated in the Second World War changed the policy towards Bulgarian society. In cultural perspective this results in the belief that Bulgarian society is welcoming refugees Russia. For the next 45 years Bulgarian policy was and immigrants could find a warm reception in the entirely Russophile. Once again the party was heavily country. As we will see below, citizen journalism influenced by Russia. Industries were developed, but within the websites of traditional gives the country became isolated from the West. many reasons to doubt this stereotype. Page Style The next change came in 1989. The communist All paragraphs must be indented. All paragraphs party resigned after a period of social protests and must be justified, i.e. both left-justified and right- strikes. The political landscape became polarised and justified. since then the socialist party (and recently the nation-

112 CULTURE, IDENTITY AND CITIZEN JOURNALISM IN… nalist party “Ataka”) is considered to be Russophile, and share its own content. At this time appeared many while the other parties are russophobic or neutral (the web platforms for shared content, known as social latter is actually a rare occasion). media – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Blogs and many These changes in Bulgarian policy show why the others. Many authors claim that the need of sharing Russophiles vs Russophobes issue is so important for appeared because of the changing family structure in Bulgarian culture. The crisis in Ukraine and the war in the technologically advanced countries. Most of the Syria brought this controversy back in the public social web’s users live in small families with rare or agenda. totally lacking connections with relatives and friends which narrows the traditional social space of the IV. DEVELOPMENT OF CITIZEN JOURNALISM individuals. The Social Web changed the one way communi- We should define what the reasons for the cation model, used by traditional mass media and Web appearance of citizen journalism were and to what 1.0 websites. The audience was no longer a passive extent does this new kind of journalism exist in consumer of the information, it became an information Bulgaria. If we look back at the first online media web creator. It also gave users the opportunity to connect sites we will notice that they were very similar to the to each other and form “groups of interests”, discus- traditional press – one-way communication, which sions etc. The audience was no more a mass of not- relied mostly on written text and rarely on photos and connected-to-each-other people. It became a society of other formats. As the connection speed rose up and the interconnected active users, sharing large amounts of open-source software appeared, Internet evolved from content on random topics. the static Web 1.0 to the Social Web 2.0. It enabled Why is interactivity so important for the citizen- everyone to create and share information in a wide journalism and the change of the traditional com- variety of formats, without being a journalist. This munication roles? It is widely accepted that 3 major caused the rise of so called “citizen journalism” – made types of interactivity exist – navigational, functional for citizens by citizens, which changed the informa- and adaptive interactivity. tional habits of the society. The information flow is not one-way anymore and very often professional jour- A. Navigational interactivity. nalists use the audience as a source of information. Navigational Interactivity lets the users choose While there are different categorizations of the their own way in the structure of the website. This is web’s specificities, including between four (Bradoel; related to the current search habits of the audience. Dauze, 2001) and twelve (Дерменджиева,2005) Online readers are used to non-linear reading. specificities, most scientists agree that the most important of them is interactivity, which became much B. Functional interactivity more important with the beginning of the Social Web. Functional interactivity lets the users interact with The open-source browsers let the audience not each other using chat-rooms, forums, or e-mail. only to see the published content, but also to create

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C. Adaptive interactivity about 60 online newspapers in Bulgaria (Дерменд- Adaptive interactivity lets the audience to change жиева, 2001:111). These numbers increased rapidly the content. Users can share their own news, recording, and today most of the traditional mass media own a photos or other content. Journalists usually have to website. mediate this process according to the website’s ethical In the field of social media and networks, Bulgaria rules. Applications such as blogs, pod-casts, news or also follows the West’s trends. Facebook became photo publishing-platforms allow the users to share popular in 2007/2008, along with the micro-blog their own content. platform Twitter, the social media for video-sharing These are the main tools of citizen journalism. YouTube, blogs, podcasts etc. At first these new Using blogs, social networks and other tools, users can formats were used merely for entertainment. At this share their own content – articles, photos, videos etc. time mass media websites were accessed primarily Thus they become an active party of the mass directly or through search engines. communication and journalists often use the audience Gradually users began to use the social media not to gather “first-hand” information. So we could only for entertainment, but also as an information tool. conclude that due to citizen journalism journalists and They began sharing articles, photos, podcasts etc. audience are constantly changing their communicative individually or in groups, according only to their roles. interests. People became so used to gathering Citizen journalism attracts lots of attention. Many information from social media that a joke appeared, people prefer to gather information through blogs and saying that “What is not on Facebook has not podcasts, shared by ordinary people, not by happened”. professional journalists, because they consider these Bulgarian mass media websites once again sources to be much more independent, objective and followed the trend closely. They created profiles and trustworthy (Burkholder:2009) than the traditional groups within the most important social networks and media, while others take the opposite view and allowed the users to easily share their content directly emphasize that citizen journalism does not comply to and standards for objectivity and trustworthiness. in these networks. In spite of that the informational monopoly of V. DEVELOPMENT OF WEB AND CURRENT ONLINE MEDIA journalists within the mass media websites in Bulgaria OWNERSHIP IN BULGARIA remained unchanged. Mass media began using the social media to distribute news and other articles, but In spite of being a former socialist country, Bulgaria they didn’t socialize themselves. Very little was done follows closely the global trends in the field of mass to create societies of interconnected users in these communication. The first online emissions in Bulgaria websites. Accordingly Bulgarian mass-media websites date from May, 1993. The first online newspaper have a very low level of citizen journalism and user- appeared in 1995, and in 1998 there already were generated content.

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One reason for this could be found in the later some of its members became ministers in the ownership of mass media. In Bulgaria there are 3 big second GERB government. Currently Prokopiev’s media monopolies – “Ikonomedia”, owned by Ivo media group “Ikonomedia” is supporting the president, Prokopiev (11 media websites incl. Dnevnik daily and Rosen Plevneliev, whose political views are headed Capial Light – 2 of the most influential newspapers; PC towards the cooperation with NATO and the limitation World etc.), “New Bulgarian Media Group” – owned by of Russian influence in Bulgaria. Delyan Peevski (although his mother Irena Krasteva is The other mass media owner, Delyan Peevski, has officially the executive director of the media group), a always been associated with certain political bodies. current member of the parliament (over 33 online and First in 2001 he joined the National Movement Simeon traditional media, incl. Blitz informational agency and II. Since 2009 he is a member of the Movement for influential newspapers as Telegraph and Monitor, as rights and freedoms – a centrist political party formed well as TV channels such as BBT, TV7 etc. The third initially to protect the rights of minorities in Bulgaria. group is BTV Media Group which consists of 20 TV Delyan Peevski is a member of the current parliament channels and web sites (incl. BTV – the biggest and was assigned as a head of the State Agency for national TV). National Security by the former government of Plamen The formation of such big monopolies results in Oresharski, but after heavy social protests he resigned. two things. On one hand it results in lack of BTV Media Group currently belongs to the Central competition between the media, which leads to small European Media Enterprises. Since it started airing in income and leaves the media in very bad the year 2000, BTV has always been related to the financial state. On the other hand these media are name of Krasimir Gergov – and advertising and PR often being used to support the political and financial expert, owner of “KRES” advertising agency and interests of their owners, which makes them chairman of the Association of the advertising agencies. dependent on certain political parties. In this case web Officially he has never been related to any political designers often advisedly restrict the citizen party, although some journalistic enquiries that claim journalism on their websites, because it is hard to that he has received much money from advertising make active users follow the pre-written agenda. contracts with the political party GERB. Here we should emphasize that most of the mass As we can clearly see, the mass media ownership in media owners in Bulgaria are very politically active. If Bulgaria makes it very easy for the owners to use their we go back to the abovementioned names, we could means of mass communication for political purposes. see that they are all membering or at least actively This causes many objectivity issues and makes the supporting certain political parties. For example Ivo audience highly distrustful. So it could be expected Prokopiev has never been a member of any political that using the means of citizen journalism within the party. His media group however actively supported the traditional mass media web sites, the audience will first GERB government and “Protestna mrezha” – give a better picture of the current state of the which was created as a non-political organization, but researched cultural issues. Of course there is always

115 КУЛТУРА / CULTURE, 13/ 2016 the possibility of moderation/censorship in some of which can be found in 15/18 sites. Of course we must the websites and some of the websites do not support emphasize that this is not really “citizen journalism”. It can any kind of citizen journalism tools. However this is a be defined as “adding value” to the publications of really rare case in Bulgarian online media. professional journalists by adding different opinions and points of view. Newspapers Magazines TVs News agencies Info-web sites dnevnik.bg Rozali.com Gong.bg bTV.bg Dnes.bg Off News 24chasa.bg Zajenata.bg Dariknews.bg Novatv.bg Focus-news.net PIK informational agency standartnews.com Manager.bg Bnr.bg Bnt.bg Mediapool.bg Blitz informational agency

Tabl. 1 Selected mass media websites

In spite of being very popular some years ago, forum ELECTION METHOD AND CRITERIA VI. S sections now are very rarely found. They are usually considered to be hard to moderate and they need much For the purposes of the research it is appropriate to server resources. Only 6 out of 18 examined websites use the most common categories of traditional media – have forum sections. The numbers are not better when it newspapers, magazines, radios, TVs and news agencies. comes to blogs (4/18 websites) and other publishing We will examine the three most popular websites in platforms (5/18 websites). Only six of the websites each category (15 websites altogether), according to the provide such platforms. It is very important to note that Alexa.com popularity ratings. blogs and podcasts usually are not part of the website’s In addition to that it is important to look at a new form structure. In fact they are reposted from bigger platforms. of mass media. There are many new informational web The editors of the media carefully select the bloggers sites, claiming to be news agencies. Usually their whose posts can be reposted, in compliance with the publications are translated copies from foreign websites or policy of the media. This bloggers could be considered as from other Bulgarian websites. Most of them don’t comply freelance reporters of the media which is the exact case in with any journalistic standards and objectivity and trustworthiness are always into question. The majority of standartnews.com. In the “Bloggers” section there are these sites appeared in the period of political crisis in only 3 bloggers and all of them are leading Bulgarian Bulgaria in 2013 – 2014 and they are dependent on political journalists. Sometimes the authors of the blogs are the players. So our research includes a total of 18 websites. reporters of the particular media. Their blogs provide To define the level of online journalism we must first content, which is not published among the articles of the search for the applications of adaptive interactivity, most media. Only five of the websites let the users share their common of which are comments, forums, blogs and own short news and photos. publishing platforms for photos, videos and other Dnevnik.bg demonstrates the most interesting multimedia. The most common opportunity for users to approach towards blogs. Bloggers could join to a section publish something on the selected web sites are comments, of the website called “Blogosphere”. The platform

116 CULTURE, IDENTITY AND CITIZEN JOURNALISM IN… automatically selects blogposts which are to be reposted. Right in the beginning we should rule the online The copyrights belong to the bloggers and dnevnik.bg is magazines out of the research. The 3 most popular not responsible for the shared news and opinions. Bulgarian magazines in Internet don’t deal with Btv.bg, nova.bg, rozali.bg, dnevnik.bg and 24chasa.bg cultural, political or international problems. While give users some additional opportunities to share content. rozali.bg and zajenata.bg publish mainly fashion and They provide platforms for news-sharing. In .bg this sensational articles, Manager.bg covers financial topics platform is called “Me, the reporter” and in dnevnik.bg – together with some entertainment articles. We should “Dnevnik L!VE”. Dnevnik.bg requires the shared news to rule out the website of station Gong.bg, which be no longer than 140 symbols and they undergo editorial actually is a sports radio, and doesn’t deal with these consideration process before been made visible on the issues too, as well as the websites of Bulgarian national website. radio and Focus Informational agency which have no platform for comments. We could also exclude the blog VII. CULTURE AND IDENTITY ACCORDING TO THE COMMENTS sections of BTV (covers only health topics) and IN BULGARIAN ONLINE MASS MEDIA Standartnews.bg (blogs are written by professional journalists and could not be considered as citizen- Ever since the liberation of Bulgaria people are journalism). trying to define their identity which is usually So what is left to research are mainly the comments, stretched between Russophiles and Russophobes. Of which add value to the publications. Most comment course there is right and wrong in this dispute, since sections in the websites have the rule that comments the relations between the 2 countries differ a lot in must be consistent with the topic of the publication. So different periods. Ususally russophiles emphasize the empirical data could be gathered by examining cultural similarities (incl. language similarities) comments to publications related to Russia or to between the countries, while russophobes emphasize immigration issues. the cultural differences. It is interesting to notice that The number of publications, related to Russia both groups use the Socialist period (1945 – 1989) in (keywords: Russia, Russian) and to the refugee issues Bulgaria to support their opinions. (keywords: refugees, immigrants, immigration) in the This dispute got more intensive since the beginning period 01. June 2015 and 1 September 2015 is shown of the Ukraine issue and the government crisis in in Table 2. Since the number of comments continues to Bulgaria (2013 – 2014), as well as since the beginning grow even months after publishing, next to the of Syrian immigrants issue, which brought Bulgarian number of publications is shown the average number economy right to the edge. And now, in the light of of comments per publication as it was calculated up to elections approaching, discussions get really hot. So 1st September 2015. Respectively the percent how does the audience of traditional mass media’s calculations in the following columns represent websites define its own identity, outside of the political average values. agenda?

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Mass media Russophiles vs. Russophobes controversy Refugee issues Publications/ avg. Publications / avg. comments per comments per

publication (%) (%) (%) publication (%) (%) (%) Neutral Neutral Tolerant Intolerant Intolerant Russophile Russophile Russophobe Russophobe Dnevnik.bg 708 / 250 17 60 23 355 / 120 30 35 35 24chasa.bg 558 / 20 36 32 32 210 / 15 28 30 42 Standartnews 1112 / 40 40 48 12 312 / 25 39 31 30 Rozali.com N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A Zajenata.bg N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A Manager.bg N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A Gong.bg N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A Dariknews 497 / 30 39 45 16 187 / 15 25 40 35 BNR.bg 800 / no comments N/A N/A N/A 380 / no comments N/A N/A N/A bTV 180 / 30 42 45 13 82 / 20 40 32 28 Nova.bg 250 / 10 40 50 10 115 / 10 40 40 20 Bnt.bg 40 / 10 32 25 43 28 / 10 25 30 45 Dnes.bg 490 / 60 35 40 25 205 / 45 35 48 17 Focus-news 475 / no comments N/A N/A N/A 295 / no comments N/A N/A N/A Mediapool 414 / 10 40 52 8 192 / 10 30 55 15 Off News 275 / 20 30 45 25 120 / 15 35 41 24 PIK 384 / 20 55 30 15 185 / 15 38 35 27 Blitz 298 / 10 49 40 11 155 / 10 34 30 36 \ Tabl. 2 Comments in the selected traditional media websites, concerning Russophilia and refugees

As we can clearly see in the table publications about Bulgarian culture and identity ever since the liberation of Russia gain much more comments in the researched the Ottoman Empire and it has often influenced the period than publications about refugees and immigration process of taking of important political decisions. crisis. Still the number of publications about both topics According to the results of the comments analysis shows that they are really important for the media agenda Bulgarian society is still strongly divided in its opinion and the quantity of comments makes them both important about Russia. The only traditional media website, where for the public agenda as well. Russophobe comments clearly prevail over Russophile So what conclusions could we make about the current comments is Dnevnik.bg. This is not so surprising if we state of the Russophile vs. Russophobe controversy? As keep in mind its supporting role for the GERB party and we already this has been a really important part of the president’s russophobic political line. It is important to

118 CULTURE, IDENTITY AND CITIZEN JOURNALISM IN… notice that the website provides a comment rating system, not prove the opposite statement too. The only possible which plays at least a partial role for the gap between conclusion is that Bulgarian society has not reached Russophile and Russophobe comments. If a comment agreement on this cultural issue. gains a certain number of “Dislikes” it gets disabled and could not be seen on the website. Of course it works for VIII. CONCLUSION both Russophile and Russophobe comments, so it is not exactly possible to estimate the amount of comments Based on the researched publications and which have been disabled. comments, concerning the Russophile vs. Russophobe All of the other websites have nearly equal numbers of controversy and the immigration issues we can Russophile and Russophobe comments. Usually, but not conclude that Bulgaria society still has not reached an always, russophobic comments are slightly more than the agreement on neither of these issues. This does not Russophile ones, but the percentage differences are so support the traditional beliefs that Bulgarian society is small, that they could not bring us to certain conclusions. mainly Russophile and tolerant towards refugees. As It is interesting to notice that comments concerning Russia usually in times of political and financial difficulties are rarely neutral. Only within Bnt.bg the neutral there is a high degree of polarization in Bulgarian comments prevail over the others, but the general quantity society, which makes it impossible to identify the of the comments in this website is so small, that it doesn’t current state of such important cultural and identity change the general trend of polarization which we have issues. already discovered. Comments concerning refugees and the immigration REFERENCES crisis are much more balanced. In three occasions neutral comments prevail over the others and in the other cases [1] Дерменджиева, Грета. Българските вестници в Интернет. В the quantities of tolerant / intolerant / neutral comments българо-германски сб.: Журналистиката днес и утре. ФЖМК, are very close. The only websites which demonstrate high Том 3, 2001, с. 111-128. discrepancies between tolerant and intolerant comments [2] Bardoel, Jo, Deuze, Mark, (2001). Network Journalism: Converging Competences of Media Professionals and Professionalism. In: are Mediapool and Dariknews. Still these results show Australian Journalism Review 23 (2), pp.91-103. that there is a large gap between the opinions of different [3] Дерменджиева Гр., Еволюция на човешката комуникация в members of the audience. So the comments in the медиите. Год. СУ. Фак. по журналистика и масова комуникация. researched websites do not confirm the traditional belief Т. 11. 2005. [4] Burkholder, C. “Citizen journalism. Blogging”. Available in: that Bulgaria is an open and welcoming country when it http://www.journalismethics.info. comes to accommodate refugees. Actually comments do

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