MAIN FUNCTIONS OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION IN THE NIŠ WEEKLY INFORMATIVE NEWSPAPER NARODNA REČ

Abstract

In a society, the role of the media in political communication should be principally based on the postulates of the informative function of political communication. Accordingly, it should be focused on informing the public about important political events in an objective manner. However, the results of the research have indicated that the media frequently enter the field of persuasive function of political communication, particularly represent the views of one political option and in that way contribute to political and social divisions. Based on the conducted qualitative content analysis, we can conclude that the main hypothesis - In the weekly newspaper “Narodna reč” all functions of political communication are represented through the texts with political topics - has been confirmed. Within the first seven issues of this weekly newspaper, we found political texts, which, if we regard them as a message to public opinion, are entirely in the function of political information, political socialization and political persuasion. Also, an important finding suggests that the most predominant function of political communication is persuasive. Certainly, this emanated from the political one-sidedness of the newspaper Narodna reč; in other words, from an evident opposition orientation.