One tabloid to rule them all

This paper explores the strategies that populists use in the media in contexts of civic contestations of populist government policies. The authors take the case study of Belgrade Waterfront protests in Serbia in 2016, in which the dominant populist party (SNS) successfully devalued the protests by using tabloid press and pro-government TV news broadcasts. The paper argues that a successful consolidation of populist politics was possible only through developing deep political and media polarization. As a sample, the authors take a look at protests from April to September and analyze dominant media narratives in pro-gov tabloid Informer and TV Pink, cross-comparing them with critically oriented daily Danas and TV N1.