Three Decades of Digital Media and Journalism in Croatia and Slovenia: A Systematic Review of Empirical Studies Published in Local Languages

Abstract

Through the lens of the theory of mediamorphosis, the authors intend to demonstrate scientific contributions in the native languages of Croatian and Slovenian scholars to the study of digital journalism. This paper provides an insight into the common points but also similarities and differences in the evolution of interests and approaches of these scientific communities, which are special in that they are the only two members of the European Union that also share the legacy of the socio-political system of the former Yugoslavia. The central goal of this study was to identify, evaluate, and synthesize all the relevant empirical research, categorized only as original scientific papers that had been published from 1994 to 2024, together with scientific monographs on digital media and journalism, in order to contribute to filling the gap in regard to the review of local literature and internationalized local research. The primary search on the following terms and keywords: digital media, digital journalism, electronic publications, Internet, Internet journalism, Internet portals, new media, online media, online journalism, online portals, and web portals was conducted via several local databases (HRČAK, CEEOL, SCIndex, and COBISS). Using a systematic literature review strategy and content analysis methods, this study deeply explored several aspects of the empirical studies (N = 24) it found: metadata, theoretical background, research objects, methodology, and results. The articles were, in principle, published in local journals with high international impact and included in major databases WOS and SCOPUS. The findings show the first articles in Croatia date only from 2007 and from 2010 in Slovenia. With some interruptions, they are published relatively regularly. In the corpus analyzed, two scientific monographs from Croatia and one from Slovenia were included. The research confirms that the topics studied in this region and the methodologies used are characteristic of the contemporary trends in digital journalism studies. Although the thematic focuses are somewhat similar—journalistic texts and writing; editorial protocols; practices; policies; division of labor; organization; platform regulations and preferences; and audience behavior—there is a significant difference in the methodological approach; Croatian scholars rely on output manifestation and the analysis of media content; while Slovenian colleagues mainly research media organizations from the inside; through interviews.

1. Introduction

As far as the online media development forecast is concerned, it can be argued that according to the 30-Year Rule (Saffo 1992), this phenomenon has become a deep part of our culture. In this sense, recent global scholarly discussions and research concerning digital media and journalism show a universe that is no longer so new and has its own specific logic, which has thus far been extensively and thoroughly studied and documented from technological, societal, economic, professional, and other perspectives in the past three decades. On the contrary, scientific activities that are localized on the territory of the countries of the former Yugoslavia are somewhat limited, and they are accompanied by at least three specific problems.

The first relates to the discrepancy between the multiple important roles that digital media and journalism play in numerous aspects of contemporary life and the specificity of digital journalism in relation to traditional journalism, plus the regularity in the scientific monitoring of those phenomena. Digital media in the post-Yugoslavian region have been the main source of news for the largest share of the audience in the last twenty years, and numerous digital publications are among the most trusted brands (Peruško 2023). For example, the launch of the Croatian Radiotelevision website in 1994 is marked as being a turning point in the development of online media in Croatia, and, since 1998, the number of such websites has grown exponentially (Brautović 2010). At that time, just a few media regularly updated their content on webpages, and none of the printed newspapers even had an online edition. Glas Istre was one of the first to start developing its website in June 1996 (Malović 1997). Today, the official list of the Croatian Agency for Electronic Media includes as many as 524 electronic publications (Agency for Electronic Media (Croatia) 2024a). Regardless of those trends and even though the first Reuters Digital News Report dates from 2012, only Croatia is included in that research from among the former Yugoslav countries, and that during the period 2017–2024 (Peruško 2017; Peruško 2024). It seems that the surveyed Croatian audience (samples range from 2001 in 2022 to 2010 in 2018) belongs to the category of the most digitally active countries covered by that report since, in the last six years, more than 90% have access to/use the internet. Given those last eight years of analysis, the majority of the respondents use online and social media as their main news sources (on average 89%; between 91% in 2017 and 80% in 2024), Facebook is the top messaging application for news (average use of 55%, with the exclusion of 2017, when it was Viber—14%), and news portals are continuously part of the list of the news outlets given the most trust since this was measured seven years ago. The trend in podcast use (more than a third of respondents, 37%) was detected in 2019. In relation to the top five of the most used online media brands, there have not been significant changes for almost a decade. Indeks.hr, 24sata online, Jutarnji online, Dnevnik online, Net.hr, and Tportal.hr are the most popular electronic publications, while occasional shifts are noticed between the first, second, and third. The results also indicate that respondents mostly use free online content, since only an average of 7.5% of them pay for it (Peruško 2017, 2024). Regarding similar reports informing us about the state of the digital media landscape in the remainder of the post-Yugoslavian countries, only data older than a decade is available, and that is available only as the result of the Open Society Foundation’s 60-country digital media mapping project. Beside Croatia (Andrijašević and Car 2012), they include Bosnia and Herzegovina (Džihana et al. 2012), Macedonia (Belicanec and Ricliev 2012), Serbia (Jovanovic Padejski 2011), and Slovenia (Kerševan Smokvina 2012). Even though this information is outdated, a comprehensive analysis of media consumption and the relationships between digital media publishers and journalism, technology, business, policies, laws, and the regulators provides a clear picture of the state of the online media and journalism industry and could thus be used in a variety of ways. In addition, systematic approaches are scarce, i.e., similar longitudinal, comprehensive national, and comparative scholarly studies. All of the aforementioned indicate the urgent need for the consistent collection of such data and its processing.

It should also be noted that, from a legislative perspective, the digital space in the two countries under consideration was initially regulated primarily by the umbrella media laws (Zakon o medijih 2001; Zakon o medijima 2004) and then by the Electronic Media Act (Zakon o elektroničkim medijima 2021), which online media calls electronic publications, and the Electronic Communications Act (Zakon o elektronskih komunikacijah 2022). Furthermore, in Croatia, for instance, the Agency for Electronic Media (Agency for Electronic Media (Croatia) 2024b) stands as

“(…) an independent regulatory body that promotes public interest and media pluralism, justifies public trust through professional and transparent activities, encourages media literacy, creates conditions for the production of quality Croatian audiovisual content and ensures equal conditions for media development and media freedom”.

The second question concerns the value of meta-research on universal scientific topics. Since it has been impossible to imagine the modern media industry without digital media and journalism for some time now, it is to be expected that science keeps pace not only with the developmental perspective of this scientific object but also with its own intrinsic endeavors. However, the lack of scientific literature reviews refutes this idea. The only paper of that type that we came across during the writing of this article is the research of the Serbian scholarly opus on the online audience phenomenon, which aimed to identify the topics researched in relation to the analyzed literature in the context of digital media and journalism published in the COBISS database from the period 2004–2019 (Ninković Slavnić 2019). Its findings show that, in general, legitimate social science methods, such as discourse and content analysis, surveys, and in-depth interviews, were used. Still, from 34 papers, the first one was published only in 2010, nine were based on empirical findings, and, in two, data were collected directly from the audience, while three articles were based on the analysis of audience comments on websites.

Although the isolated example of a review article addresses one of the central research interests in digital journalism studies, in general, it does not demonstrate a promising status for scholarly engagement, and thus a similar situation can be argued for in relation to other topics, other countries in the region, and over a longer period of time. Such a void makes perceiving the scientific thought growth in regard to this specific thematic framework problematic for both science and the profession, particularly in light of progressive media development.

Finally, there are challenges that are related to the specificities of media systems in the post-Yugoslavian region, which consequently affect the scholarly relation to these topics. The theory of mediamorphosis, a process of communication media transformation that is determined by “perceived needs, competitive and political pressures, and social and technological innovations” (Fidler 1997, p. 23), calls for a comparative chronological-thematic insight. And that from the time of its emergence and during the period of the strengthening of online media’s position in countries that were simultaneously undergoing a major heterogeneous socio-political transformation during the transition from being a socialist authoritarian regime to taking on both capitalism and democracy, which was one of the obstacles in the timely development of their full potential, which did not happen in other Western countries. The media system analysis based on a historical institutionalist approach (Peruško 2013) argues that the stability of social institutions is conditioned by firm political systems. In the post-socialist countries of Southeast Europe, however, the period between the regime changes that alter the foundations of the institutional order occurs relatively frequently, which has directly influenced the media systems’ progress. Furthermore, the introduction of democracy in the period after the 1990s, which was characterized by national independence and was followed by political and market’ pluralism and, to various degrees, European integration, has had an important impact on the development of new media systems, primarily changing them from convergent to divergent. The results of the cluster analysis of the post-Yugoslavian countries, which is based on the indicators of economic and political development in three timeframes (the period of modernization in the nineteenth century, the socialist period after World War II, and the period of democratic transformation after 1989), showed that, even though they share a socialist-communist experience that differs from that of other countries in Central and South-Eastern Europe, there are also significant contrasts among them (Peruško 2016). The main motive for choosing to research scientific production in Croatia and Slovenia in this study is that they completed the transition process by joining the European Union, unlike other countries in the region, and are therefore similar in socio-political, economic, educational, and scientific aspects. By uncovering the evolution of empirical research within digital journalism studies in those two countries and by focusing on determining a common ground in scholarly reflection, our study seeks to make a modest contribution to the questions raised by the setting described above.

Structured as a systematic review, this paper builds on previous international scholarly work of that type within digital journalism studies (Steensen and Westlund 2021). As a segment of an “academic field which critically explores, documents, and explains the interplay of digitization and journalism, continuity and change” (Eldridge et al. 2019, p. 394), it will for the first time bring an overview of the experiential scientific production that has been published in domestic scientific journals and languages.

The purpose of this detailed insight is threefold: to record the scientific effort of domestic researchers that otherwise goes under the radar, to point out trends and dead ends that can, we hope, stimulate further research, and help build a larger corpus of such specific knowledge, as well as to strengthen a specific regional scientific network and discourse and to support the development of scientific thought based on mutual examples of interest in topics and approaches in this area.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Research Problem, Main Goal, and Questions

This qualitative study addresses a paradox that was identified during preliminary research. That is the deficit of scholarly literature in the digital era that deals with digital media and journalism in former Yugoslav countries. The original idea was to make a comparative study of empirical research published in local journals and languages of all those countries. However, we faced the following difficulties in searching for works in the rest of the region: the lack of scientific databases, the lack of original scientific articles with empirical research published in local languages, the lack of scientific journals in the fields of journalism, media, and communications, and our insufficient knowledge of all local languages. Due to these shortcomings and the fact that they are members of the EU, which means there are more points for comparison, we decided on Croatia and Slovenia.

Moreover, a systematic review of the above-noted characteristics has not yet been undertaken, nor has it been publicly registered as an ongoing project. Regarding that shortage, it was hard to make presumptions about the nature and scope of literature related to the targeted research object. However, it can be argued that the described circumstances impede the development of both the academic and media profession fields.

The study, therefore, aims to locate all relevant published work about digital media and journalism in Croatia and Slovenia over the past three decades in order to pinpoint the main issues, trends, and deficiencies, as well as to describe paradigmatic positions and structural guidelines for future research in the field. Respectively, it aims to identify, evaluate, and synthesize empirical research within the domain of digital journalism studies and to contribute to evidence-based practice.

Concretely, this research aims to answer the following research questions:

RQ1: What dominant topics were studied?

RQ2: What research methods were most commonly used?

RQ3: Where do the research interests overlap?

RQ4: Which approaches are neglected, missing, or unnecessary?

2.2. Method

For this purpose, a systematic literature review has been used, a legitimate research method that is widely recognized across disciplines, including digital journalism studies (e.g., López-García et al. 2019; O’Brien et al. 2020; Reimer et al. 2021; de-Lima-Santos 2023; Lopezosa et al. 2023). The recommendation to scientists to focus on holistic and systematic approaches, which resulted from a critical analysis of the quality and practice of literature review in the domain of digital journalism studies, may serve as an additional argument in favor of conducting such research (Steensen and Westlund 2021). This comprehensive method is known for its explicit approach and transparent methodological process, a tendency to be less biased, and its replicability potential. As such, it is valuable as “a novel and important substantive contribution to knowledge in its own right” (Siddaway et al. 2019, p. 752).

Further, we build on the idea of its application as a synthesis that leads to firm and broad conclusions and implications and the studies’ interrelationship, particularly in the context of theory and prospective scholarly tendencies (Siddaway et al. 2019). In order to link numerous studies on different topics and to provide a developmental overview of the body of knowledge on digital media and journalism, we have opted for a narrative review strategy (Baumeister and Leary 1997). Hence, by compiling existing data into a history of an idea about digital media and journalism in Croatia and Slovenia, which is here, to the best of our knowledge, undertaken for the first time, this article goes beyond individual research and, as such, maybe a useful contribution to the field. In particular, it includes an extensive collection of literature composed of articles and books written in the languages of this specific region, which makes it difficult to access internationally.

Content analysis was used (Yin 2015) to inspect individual studies, and the units of the analysis were (1) the original scientific empirical article, published either in regional scientific journals in Croatian or Slovenian, and (2) the scientific monograph with empirical research published by a regional scientific publisher in Croatian or Slovenian, both focusing on topics relating to digital media and journalism. Details are explained below.

2.3. Study Procedure

In creating the study’s design, we have used the proposed stages of scoping, planning, searching, screening, and presenting (Siddaway et al. 2019, p. 752).

Scoping. The first phase commenced with the identification of similar reviews. After we established the gap, the protocol was continued by formulating research questions and deciding about the extent and the limits of the study.

Planning. During outlining the research, the main search terms and keywords were formulated: digitalni mediji (digital media), digitalno novinarstvo (digital journalism), elektroničke publikacije/elektronske publikacije (electronic publications), internet (Internet), internetsko novinarstvo/internetno novinarstvo (Internet journalism), internet portali (Internet portals), novi mediji (new media), online mediji/onlajn mediji/on-line mediji/spletni mediji (online media), online novinarstvo/onlajn novinarstvo/on-line novinarstvo/spletno novinarstvo (online journalism), and online/onlajn/on-line portal/spletni portal (online portal) and web portal (web portal). Other terms were geographical and included nouns related to the countries that we are researching: Hrvatska (Croatia) and Slovenija (Slovenia), including the adjectives used, such as hrvatski (Croatian) and slovenski (Slovenian). We ensured that the list includes different terminology because terms are used unevenly, in particular, keywords determined by the specifics of the local languages as they appeared and as they have been used over time as their case variants, as well as synonyms, singular/plural forms, and broader/narrower terms. We have also included English expressions that are frequently used in their original form in the Croatian and Slovenian languages and for those for which there is no domesticated expression. Further, we identified initial selection criteria for both literature types:

Articles’ inclusion criteria:

• Articles in the Croatian and Slovenian languages
• Articles published between 1994 and 2024
• Articles published in scientific journals that are headquartered in the countries of the region
• Published peer-reviewed scientific articles with empirical research
• Articles categorized as original scientific papers
• Clear and thorough description of research methodology that complies with scientific principles
• Thematic focus on digital media and/or digital journalism in Croatia and Slovenia
• From the list of articles reporting identical studies, the most recent one was selected
• Full text available

Articles’ exclusion criteria:

• Articles in English
• Other types of articles (theoretical scientific articles, review papers, preliminary communications, editorials, professional papers, conference papers, case reports, essays, etc.)
• Comparative studies
• Articles published in other sources (bulletins, magazines, etc.)
• Articles published in foreign journals
• Articles whose central topic is not digital media and/or digital journalism
• Reports, Ph.D. theses, graduate and other assessment papers, webpage texts, journal articles, and other types of documents
• Unpublished articles (e.g., pre-prints)
• Grey literature

Books’ inclusion criteria:

• Complete book
• Books in the Croatian and Slovenian languages
• Books published only by local scholarly publishers
• Books published between 1994 and 2024
• Scientific monographs with empirical research
• Thematic focus on digital media and digital journalism in Croatia and Slovenia
• Printed e-books
• Full text available, Slovenian titles available online

Books’ exclusion criteria:

• Book chapters
• Books in English published by domestic or foreign publishers
• Books whose central topic is not digital media and/or digital journalism
• Handbooks, textbooks, reference literature, professional books, and proceedings
• Non-published books, compendiums, scripts, workshop materials, etc.

Searching. The identification phase of the scientific articles included all available regional databases: HRČAK (Portal of Croatian scientific and professional journals), CEEOL (Central and Eastern European Open Library), and SCIndex (Serbian Citation Index). Google Scholar advanced search was carried out to prevent excluding potentially significant references in journals that are not listed in the mentioned databases. To inspect the list of books matching our criteria, we explored all national and university libraries’ e-catalogs and COBISS (Co-operative Online Bibliographic Systems and Services). Inter-rater reliability was secured according to the best practice proposal (Siddaway et al. 2019). Both researchers participated in defining research terms and keywords, as well as during the main selection process. All doubts were resolved by deep discussion based on their long-term research and journalistic experience. Although the initial protocol for the researchers was to divide the data collection process into (a). searching databases and (b) searching books/collections, the research process often resulted in finding literature from another corpus, which was then redirected. As the exploration progressed, the criteria were refined, and the need for additional searches arose. This work was conducted several times during 2024, starting preliminarily in January, and ending with a final search in December. The search was obtained according to the sensitivity process; we were focused on identifying as many articles and books as possible, primarily because of the lack of similar data.

The comprehensiveness of the cyclical search conducted by each researcher is beyond the scope of this article. To illustrate the operationalization process, therefore, several examples of independent searches will be presented. (1). The HRČAK database was a starting point for our article research because Croatian journals, available for free in this database, regularly publish studies from other countries in the region. The use of the first collection of selected descriptors and described procedures gave results as follows: online media (14/37), online journalism (7/9), digital journalism (1/3), digital media (37/108), internet portals (16/28), online portals (1/4), portals (52/160), and new media (100/286), where the first number stands for articles written in the Croatian language and the second one those in English. Among those results, there were different types of articles from Slovenia and other countries in the region, such as Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as comparative ones. The derived items (228/635) were systematically sifted because many articles were tagged with multiple descriptors. (2). For the primary search of the books written in the Croatian language by Croatian authors, the list used in the HEJDE project1 (HEJDE 2024), created from 2012 to 2023 by using an advanced search of data available at the Croatian National and University Library’s (NSK) e-catalog. From 505 entries in the fields of information and communication sciences, 46 titles were first identified according to the inclusion/exclusion criteria. (3). The newest search of the NSK database on Croatian descriptors for the period 2023–2024 gave the following results: online and medij* (240); internet* and novinarstv* (75); and digital* novinarstv* (72), from which only 12 publications were set for deeper reading. (4). A COBISS search of the keywords in Slovenian language spletni mediji with the following active filters: type of material (e-book and printed book); typology of works/documents (scientific monograph); and language (Slovenian) resulted in 65 hits, none of which were from the required field. Further, spletno novinarstvo gave 4 results, of which only one was set for further inspection and was finally not included. (5). A Google Scholar search for digitalni mediji and Slovenija showed 174 hits; after examining each item individually, only 7 were collected for a second reading, but, in the end, none of them matched the set criteria.

It is necessary to point out that most articles included in this systematic review that resulted from the above-described search are published in local scientific journals indexed also in the central international databases Web of Science and/or Scopus. Those are Medijska istraživanja—Media research and Medijske studije—Media studies in Croatia; and Javnost—The Public and Teorija in praksa in Slovenia.

Screening. An initial collection of the articles by searching the database HRČAK was made using the reference management tool Zotero (Stillman et al. 2024) in order to undertake a preliminary sorting of the first group of articles in relation to journal, country, article type, topic, time, etc., and to establish a mutual screening protocol.

After discussing the way to collect and calibrate the inclusion/exclusion criteria, each author constructed his/her own record-keeping method. In most cases, reading the title and the abstract of the article was the only sifting method used for identifying documents according to the determined criteria. For some, however, meeting the inclusion criteria required the reading of the entire article. For example, keywords were used to support content; articles did not meet all of the inclusion criteria, and the multiple reporting of a single study. The next screening phase was to read identified articles and books and to extract important information.

Categorization and grouping. In creating the resultant notes, we disassembled the data without coding them, while the process of reassembling them was conducted by looking for patterns and creating arrays (Yin 2015). Considering the scope of the literature and the main goal of the research, the final categorization has four levels of classification: (1) articles/books, author(s), country, year of publication, journal, type of article, and other bibliometric data; (2) main topic (media, journalism); (3) research concepts, theories, and methods; (4) results.

Presentation. Finally, the results are presented according to research questions. Additionally, this systematic literature review is detailed and chronologically structured by each country in order to show the comparative scientific growth (see Supporting Text S1).

2.4. Limitations

The study has several limitations. To begin, the edges of our final body of knowledge are primarily determined by inclusion-exclusion criteria.

Firstly, this article deals only with the state of digital journalism studies in two of the six former Yugoslavian countries, which is why general conclusions for the region cannot be drawn.

Further, articles and books published in English are not part of this review and conducted searches indicate there are also some published in the observed period. Since the exclusion of English-language publications significantly limits the scope of this study, we strongly advocate their inclusion in future studies to offer a more comprehensive understanding of the research landscape and better reflect the contributions of these academic communities to the field of digital journalism studies.

The third refers to the omission of all other types of articles, documents, and texts other than scientific ones, and all other types of scientific articles, other than empirical ones, such as theoretical scientific articles, review papers, and preliminary communication. In addition, only articles categorized as original scientific papers were analyzed here.

Furthermore, limitation also refers to a large collection of articles that have been published in journals and in the proceedings of regional conferences that traditionally present the works of scientists from that region. The study thus does not include the search results from, in the context of this review, the most relevant collections of papers from regional scientific conferences: Vjerodostojnost medija [Media Credibility] (12 issues), Digitalno-medijske tehnologije i društveno-obrazovne promene [Digital media technologies and social-educational changes] (11 issues), and Društvo, znanost i tehnologija [Society, Science and Technology/Society and Technology/Society and Technology—Juraj Plenković, Ph.D.]. The Montenegrin journal Medijski dijalozi [Media Dialogues] (36 issues), which, according to its website, was published until 2020, was not considered either because it lacks article categorization in most cases.

Besides, despite the trilingual search, it is possible that some work was omitted because selected databases did not display it by designated keywords, or that have terms/keywords that this extensive selection did not cover. Moreover, with the range of given keywords, the review did not include articles focusing on other important topics within digital journalism studies because they were likely identified by terms such as convergence, social media, social networks, artificial intelligence (AI), algorithm, datafication, etc. Adding these descriptors and similar concepts in a future review could provide a more complete picture of the topics and problems being studied in this area.

Lastly, from Slovenia, only articles and books that were available in complete form online were incorporated.

3. Results

It is important to emphasize that the findings of this systematic review relate exclusively to the set criteria, which also strictly limit it, and, in this sense, they do not present a complete catalog of all of the works by Croatian and Slovenian authors on this topic that have been published.

The search, conducted according to the rather rigorous conditions that are explained in detail above, resulted in 24 empirical studies focusing on digital media and journalism published in Croatian and Slovenian languages having been published in the last three decades (13 from Croatia and 11 from Slovenia). Based on given scientific articles and monographs, empirical research activity in Croatia has been visible for the last 17 years and in Slovenia for the last 14. With the exception of several Slovenian authors (Slaček Brlek, Vobič, and Poler Kovačič) and one Croatian (Balabanić), the researchers are diverse. The most common periods without published Croatian articles are three years, with the highest number of published articles in 2022 (5), while, in Slovenia, they are one year less, with the peak in 2014 (5). Two scientific monographs were found in Croatia (Kovačić 2021; Šošić 2021), and one in Slovenia (Kaluža and Slaček Brlek 2020). Most of the articles have been published in reputable international scientific journals—Javnost—The Public (8); Medijska istraživanja—Media research (5); Medijske studije—Media studies (2); and Teorija in praksa (2). Details are available in

Table 1. Essential data on publications in chronological order.

Publication Year	Authors		Journal	Research Domains and Disciplinary Perspectives
	CRO	SLO
2007	Brautović	-	MediAnali	Journalism studies, technology, law
2010	Benković and Balabanić	Jontes	Medijska istraživanja Teorija in praksa	Media and journalism studies/ Journalism and cultural studies, technology
2012	-	Vobič Erjavec and Poler Kovačič	Javnost Teorija in praksa	Media, journalism and organization studies/ Journalism and media studies, political science, law
2013	Hazdovac Bajić	-	Obnovljeni život	Media, journalism and religious studies
2014	-	Milosavljević	Javnost	Journalism and media studies, sociology, technology
		Poler Kovačič		Journalism and media studies, philosophy, law
		Vobič		Journalism studies
		Mance		Journalism studies and political science
		Slaček Brlek		Media studies
2015	-	Mance and Zajc	Javnost	Media, journalism and communication studies, technology
2016	Jakopović and Mikelić Preradović	-	Medijska istraživanja	Media and PR studies
2020	-	Kaluža and Slaček Brlek	-	Journalism studies
2021	Kovačić Šošić	Kaluža and Slaček Brlek	-/ Javnost	Journalism studies/ Media, journalism and communication studies, sociology, technology
2022	Bago	-	Medijske studije	Linguistics, journalism studies, technology
	Balabanić, Brgles and Ježovita		Mediji, kultura i odnosi s javnošću	Media studies, sociology
	Feldvari, Mićunović and Blagonić		Medijske studije	Communication, media and health studies, technology
	Hadžić, Šilić and Grmuša		Medijska istraživanja	Media and journalism studies, technology
	Kunić		Medijska istraživanja	Journalism studies, technology, law, gender studies
2024	Trbušić, Maleš and Šikić	-	Medijska istraživanja	PR and journalism studies, law, philosophy
	Vuković		Arti musices	Media studies and political science, sociology

Note: Authors marked in italics have published scientific monographs.

.

RQ1. Dominant topics. Thematically, the central interests of the whole corpus are connected to newsroom discovery—directly from editors and journalists and by participatory observation—about protocols; policies; professions; ethics; practice; labor division; convergence; and the organization of space at traditional and digital media outlets and; indirectly; through business documents; regulation; platform preferences; journalistic articles; and other edited content; then to the audience; researching their behavior in relation to news and other media/journalistic content—directly by surveying/interviewing; or; indirectly; by analyzing what and how they write about subjects in commentaries and/or social networks.

Digital journalism studies’ central research objects are technologies, platforms, and audiences (Steensen and Westlund 2021). The technology thematic cluster is recognized only as connected to analytics and metrics and researching privacy endangerment via cookies and online site registration (Brautović 2007) and metrics about e-publication audience (Slaček Brlek 2014; Trbušić et al. 2024). In both countries, research on standard platforms was conducted, and that includes e-publications (Brautović 2007; Benković and Balabanić 2010; Jontes 2010; Hazdovac Bajić 2013; Bago 2022; Balabanić et al. 2022; Feldvari et al. 2022; Trbušić et al. 2024; Vuković 2024), Facebook (Kovačić 2021; Feldvari et al. 2022), Twitter (Milosavljević 2014; Mance 2014; Kovačić 2021), and multiplatform research using different combinations of the following platforms—Facebook; Twitter; YouTube; Instagram; Reddit; Usenet; and forums (Šošić 2021; Hadžić et al. 2022). In addition, a few authors analyzed different types of media business documents and state regulations (Brautović 2007; Vobič 2012; Kaluža and Slaček Brlek 2021). Audience research is also actual (Erjavec and Poler Kovačič 2012; Mance and Zajc 2015; Jakopović and Mikelić Preradović 2016; Feldvari et al. 2022; Hadžić et al. 2022; Kunić 2022).

Content analysis is mainly focused on understanding how journalists, editors, and other media professionals create online content, journalistic articles, PR features, and content mediated through social networks and other platforms, especially in order to increase the readership of their e-publications. There are also articles that explore the relationship between social networks as journalistic sources or other ways in which they are used in journalistic work (Mance 2014; Milosavljević 2014; Vobič 2014; Šošić 2021; Kovačić 2021).

Journalistic professionalism is inspected from different aspects. Online media, in relation to traditional journalism and newsrooms, is considered from the ethical point of view (Poler Kovačič 2014), the organization and work routine in using Twitter (Vobič 2014), the technological development of media with regard to technological, market, and socio-political circumstances (Kaluža and Slaček Brlek 2020), and the differences/similarities between traditional and digital media (Kaluža and Slaček Brlek 2021). In Croatia, professional reporting, in terms of the editing of online media content, is monitored according to agenda, actuality, value judgments, editing and authoring (Benković and Balabanić 2010), originality, position, visual prominence, form, the article’s equipment, topic, critical attitude, title-text and image-video-text connection (Hazdovac Bajić 2013), topics, forms, headlines and other aspects of the article’s equipment, journalistic forms, criticism, ethics in judiciary reporting, journalists’ language literacy (Kovačić 2021), topics, authors’ vocabulary, topic locality and article length (Bago 2022), general identification elements, content highlighting, as well as title and content characteristics (Trbušić et al. 2024), the subject, the events, articles’ features, journalistic approach (Vuković 2024) while, in relation to social media, professionalism research is focused on uncovering the journalistic approach to that specific news source (Šošić 2021).

RQ2. Research methods. The findings show that all data collection methods applied in the found research—content analysis; interviewing; surveying; participatory observation; and network and data analysis—are conventional in the social sciences and are both characteristic and legitimate in researching the various topics within digital journalism studies (Steensen and Westlund 2021).

Traditional qualitative content analysis prevails in empirical studies published by Croatian researchers. The focus is either on the content of e-publications (Benković and Balabanić 2010; Hazdovac Bajić 2013; Jakopović and Mikelić Preradović 2016; Kovačić 2021; Šošić 2021; Bago 2022; Trbušić et al. 2024; Vuković 2024) or on the commentaries under articles published in them or on the official social networks of those media (Kovačić 2021; Balabanić et al. 2022; Feldvari et al. 2022; Hadžić et al. 2022; Kunić 2022; Vuković 2024), or analysis of information networks (Brautović 2007). However, several articles apply advanced content analysis, i.e., automated large-scale content analysis, in this case, natural language processing (Jakopović and Mikelić Preradović 2016; Bago 2022; Hadžić et al. 2022). Other empirical research methods were employed only for studies presented in scientific monographs, based on doctoral dissertations, on the interviewing of online journalists and editors (Kovačić 2021), and on the surveying of those same TV professionals (Šošić 2021). There were also studies that were conducted using a mixed-methods approach (Kovačić 2021; Šošić 2021; Trbušić et al. 2024), and several researches were carried out by using different types of computer analysis programs (Balabanić et al. 2022; Bago 2022; Hadžić et al. 2022; Kunić 2022; Trbušić et al. 2024; Vuković 2024).

Interviewing is the most used method for the collection of data in Slovenian empirical studies and in those of different media professionals (Kaluža and Slaček Brlek 2020), editors and/or journalists (Vobič 2012; Milosavljević 2014; Vobič 2014; Mance 2014; Slaček Brlek 2014; Poler Kovačič 2014; Kaluža and Slaček Brlek 2020; Kaluža and Slaček Brlek 2021), politicians (Mance 2014), and the audience (Erjavec and Poler Kovačič 2012). What follows is digital ethnography that uses this research’s strategy’s key method—participatory observation (Vobič 2012, 2014). The remaining methods are content analysis of e-publications (Slaček Brlek 2014) and of the business documents of media outlets (Kaluža and Slaček Brlek 2021), surveying the audience (Mance and Zajc 2015), network analysis (Mance 2014), and data analytics (Slaček Brlek 2014). Several studies applied a mixed-methods approach (Vobič 2012, 2014; Mance 2014; Slaček Brlek 2014; Kaluža and Slaček Brlek 2021).

Further, in a number of articles, the focus is on the audience’s “digital trace”, where virtual ethnography is applied in order to investigate their relation to news through the user comments under the published journalistic articles or in social networks. Regarding this, studies cover different topics. For instance, investigating the online image of the passenger transport organizations (Jakopović and Mikelić Preradović 2016), the opinions and attitudes of the public regarding misinformation and conspiracy theories about vaccination at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic (Feldvari et al. 2022), the use of hate speech against ethnic groups on public posts on the social networks in Croatia (Hadžić et al. 2022) and speech against women and conflict victims that is unacceptable (Kunić 2022), and views on articles that thematized the “culture of cancellation”, due to Russian aggression against Ukraine (Vuković 2024).

A methodological summary of the analyzed research in both countries is provided in

Table 2. Overview of the studies’ methodology from Croatia.

Croatian Authors	Thematic Cluster	Main Research Focus	Data Collection Methods	Number of Analytical Units/Participants	Software Used
Brautović	Platforms—privacy endangerment via cookies and online site registration	E-publications	Content analysis	31 native and 31 traditional/online home pages; HTML pages	Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.7. Cookies management software
Benković and Balabanić	Platforms—main features of Croatian online journalism	E-publications	Content analysis	1172 articles	-
Hazdovac Bajić	Platforms—presentation of religion in religious articles on front pages	E-publications	Content analysis	43 articles	-
Jakopović and Mikelić Preradović	Audience—online picture of the organization of passenger transport in users’ comments	Audience	Content analysis	3068 comments	SentiStrength
Kovačić	Platforms—journalistic role in the digital environment and (un)objective online journalism, social networks’ influence on value judgments in media communication	Journalists Documents	Content analysis Interviewing	2680 Facebook posts, and 3337 Twitter posts 5 journalists and editors	-
Šošić	Platforms—transformation of television through the rise of social media	TV news Journalists and editors	Content analysis Surveying	306 TV features 73 journalists and editors	-
Bago	Platforms—features of online (pre)pandemic newspaper articles on new findings on the COVID-19 disease	E-publications	Content analysis	500 articles	Sketch Engine Python scripts
Feldvari, Mićunović and Blagonić	Audience—public’s opinions and attitudes on misinformation and conspiracy theories about vaccination against the COVID-19 disease	Audience E-publications	Content analysis	2572 Facebook commentaries and 2004 commentaries under articles	-
Hadžić, Šilić and Grmuša	Audience—hate speech against ethnic groups and usefulness of speech technologies in detection and prevention of its dissemination	Audience	Content analysis	32,848,530 posts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Usenet and forums	WordFinder Crontiment Text Marker
Kunić	Audience—the use of unacceptable speech against women victims of verbal and physical conflicts	Audience	Content analysis	5041 commentaries under articles	VoxPopuli MySQL Gephi
Balabanić, Brgles and Ježovita	Platforms—media content in relation to Croatian veterans	E-publications	Content analysis	6012 articles	Excel SPSS (V20)
Trbušić, Maleš and Šikić	Platforms—characteristics of native advertisement Audience—activity on the portals’ public profiles	E-publications Audience	Content analysis	543 advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit and forums	Tidytext Quanteda Text2vecwere
Vuković	Platforms—“cancellation culture” on the art scene in online media	E-publicationsJournalists	Content analysis	30 articles	MAXQDA Analytics Pro 2022 (Release 22.4.0)

and

Table 3. Overview of the studies’ methodology from Slovenia.

Slovenian Authors	Thematic Cluster	Main Research Focus	Data Collection Methods	Number of Analytical Units/Participants	Software Used
Jontes	– Scientific (re)definition of journalism in the context of the potential of online journalism	Journalists	Content analysis	401 journalistic texts	-
Vobič	Platforms—reflection of convergence in newsrooms’ work and space	Journalists Documents	Participatory observation Interviewing Content analysis	18 media employees	-
Erjavec and Poler Kovačič	Audience—personalities of the hate speech writers	Audience	Interviewing	20 commentators	-
Milosavljević	Platforms—editors’ decision on journalistic use of Twitter’s content in news-making	Editors	Interviewing	13 editors	-
Poler Kovačič	Platforms—suitability of traditional journalistic ethics for online journalism	Journalists	Interviewing	12 journalists and editors	-
Vobič	Platforms—work and individual factors in the process of tweet selection in the public TV and MMC RTV	Editors	Participatory observation Interviewing	9 members of editorial board	-
Mance	Platforms—retweeting as a political communication on Twitter	Journalists	Content analysis Interviewing	2226 retweets 7 journalists and politicians	NodeXL
Slaček Brlek	Audience—behavior in the editorial decisions of the news content production	Editors	Content analysis Interviewing	275 posts 9 editors	Siteshoter iMacro for Mozilla Fireworks
Mance and Zajc	Audience—the perception of journalistic roles in the media digitization context	Audience	Surveying	500 readers of print and online media	SPSS 22.0
Kaluža and Slaček Brlek	Platforms—the state of the news production during the digitalization process	Journalists and editors	Interviewing	48 media workers	-
Kaluža and Slaček Brlek	Platforms—relationship between traditional and digital media	DocumentsEditors	Content analysis Interviewing	9 editors	-

.

RQ3. Intersections of research interests. There are commonalities in the approach to researching digital journalism in the two countries observed from the former Yugoslavia. Scientific interests in Croatia and Slovenia follow the development of journalism with new technologies and, in parallel, the theoretical achievements of digital journalism scholarship and international empirical research. Scholarly efforts are, to a greater or lesser extent, focused on answering the questions about who is a digital journalist and what is digital journalism, the characteristics of the dynamics between the power of editors and the interests of the digital media audience, and how much and in what way journalistic work has changed in relation to the traditional understanding of the profession and its consequences. The combination of different disciplinary perspectives in most of the research, such as sociology, linguistics, cultural studies, political science, religious sciences, PR, technology, gender studies, philosophy, etc. (Table 1), indicates that the authors understand and foster the interdisciplinary nature of digital journalism studies (Eldridge et al. 2019).

RQ4. Development recommendations. It is very difficult to make a statement in regard to the argumentation about which approaches, topics, methods, and strategies of digital journalism research are neglected, missing, or unnecessary, knowing that the list of articles found is restricted and thus represents only a part of the total corpus of scholarly activities in digital journalism in both of the countries observed. If we wish to analyze these scientifically based empirical efforts within such a framed space, then there are several observations worth noting.

The Croatian opus lacks a stronger connection between scholars and the media community. By collecting data directly from professionals, journalists, editors, and others who are involved in the production of digital media content, both parties would benefit in multiple ways. Besides being the only way to concretely learn about work protocols and division of labor and gain insight into the work environment, interviewing, surveying, and participatory observing are the only methods that can answer questions that are of key importance for media practice itself. Further, such collaborations are essential for gaining trust and maintaining interaction between those two sides of the same coin—the digital media profession and the science that studies it.

From a technological aspect, both groups of empirical works could expand their thematic focus to data journalism, algorithms and automation, analytics, and metrics. A deeper understanding of platforms in connection to how digital media and journalism build their platform presence could, for instance, be broadened by exploring numerous other social media networks besides Facebook and Twitter, search engines, and mobile platforms. In relation to the audience, direct contact using surveying, interviewing, focus groups, and analyzing news and media repertoires by applying Q-methodology might discover the background to their participation—contribution—production—distribution cycle.

4. Discussion

“Digital journalism is the transforming social practice of selecting, interpreting, editing and distributing factual information of perceived public interest to various kinds of audiences in specific, but changing genres and formats. As such, digital journalism both shapes and is shaped by new technologies and platforms, and it is marked by an increasingly symbiotic relationship with the audiences. The actors engaged in this social practice are bound by the structures of social institutions publicly recognized as journalistic institutions”

(Steensen et al. 2019, p. 338 in Steensen and Westlund 2021, p. 17).

The situation in Croatia and Slovenia, which we learn about from the empirical works that we have found, confirms the above-mentioned description of digital journalism studies. Moreover, it can be argued that the articles included in this study are in line with the digital journalism studies’ trends, both theoretically and methodologically (Steensen and Westlund 2021). Given the specificity of the environment in which they were created, there are several directions from which they can and should be discussed.

The first context is historical. More than thirty years after the traditionally unique and powerful connections of news and journalism moved to blogs, social media, and other platforms with the development of the World Wide Web, which then enabled the rise of citizen journalism, Croatia and Slovenia, the only two countries of the former Yugoslavia members of the European Union, have a fundamentally democratic and pluralistic media system with strong national regulations and policies that are in line with the international rule of law. Such circumstances allow professional associations and unions, NGOs, and independent bodies to regulate and monitor; scholars to research, theorize, and conceptualize; and audiences to engage in an interplay of journalism and digitalization that often signals tensions with traditional views of the profession. However, such a liberal state was achieved gradually after the last period of major socio-political change in the Balkans. It was thus during this period of national and media democratization that media digitization took place. While these parallel efforts are a key characteristic of media systems in this area, which distinguishes them from all others, they are also an aggravating circumstance that, in some aspects, makes them lag behind Western European ones. As already mentioned, the first published article in digital journalism studies in Croatia, for instance, dates from the late 1990s (Malović 1997), ten years before the first article found for the purposes of this review, while the empirical research continues with Brautović, who is one of the local scientists who, since 2003, has consistently investigated digital media and journalism. However, even using the example of similar authors who have focused their work on researching topics from the field of digital media and journalism (e.g., Milosavljević, Vobič, Kaluža, Slaček Brlek, Mance, Oblak Črnič, in Slovenia), overall there are common characteristics that can be noted, such as fragmented interests, heterogeneous topics, and the lack of a systematic approach.

Secondly, we would like to underline once again that the general landscape of digital journalism in both Croatia and Slovenia is much more extensive than the corpus that has been presented in this paper. So, although the preliminary results have shown that empirical scientific research on digital media and journalism may significantly lag behind their development, this cannot be confirmed by our research. To test such an assumption, we argue for a future comprehensive and comparative developmental analysis that will include the viewing of history, regulations, distribution, and the use of digital media, all of which should be supported by secondary findings.

In the following paragraphs, we will briefly outline the extent of the remaining literature on this topic and the reasons why these publications were omitted.

Although papers that lacked adequate methodology were immediately eliminated, there is still a large corpus of such empirical research, published by many authors from Croatia and Slovenia, that focuses on digital media and journalism, but these were excluded from this review because they did not meet the given criteria. Most often, articles are categorized differently, such as, for instance, the next two preliminary communications. The first brought a content analysis of Twitter posts by the leading Croatian online media and found that, in promoting content and establishing two-way communication online, editions of traditional media are much better at using Twitter than native online media (Brautović 2011). In the second, aimed at exploring political communication on the Internet, the article analyzes the Internet portals’ content of mayoral candidates in several Croatian cities (Balabanić and Mustapić 2010). In particular, its technological and interactive features the networking of the websites of the election candidates with other websites, and the content features of those articles published on the websites of election candidates. The findings show that those websites were used only for the election campaign; their content served as a platform for information about candidates’ election activities, and the lack of interactive elements. They were contextualized in terms of the global Internet use and the lower number of internet users in Croatia than is the average in the Western world. In Slovenia, theoretical discussion on contextualizing the journalistic labor process in the light of digital technological innovation illuminates its impoverishment, which occurs by balancing opposing forces—media market orientation and the journalistic aim—in order to perceive the public right to communicate (Vobič 2015). This article outlines the causes of journalistic de-professionalization, such as the flexibilization of space and time, which comprehensively fragmentizes and standardizes the work landscape in integrated editorial offices, converged open work environments, and ambient multiskilled journalists. In opposition to that, the individualization of labor relations—new labor division; automation; and the public perception of online journalists as being a cheap workforce—leads to precarity. In such commodified surroundings, questions of professional journalistic abilities and competencies, as well as autonomy, arise (Vobič 2015).

Then, there is a list of those articles published in English, like the research that examined how elite and non-elite media journalists in Croatia use Twitter. Focused on transparency, journalistic norms, and gatekeeping, the findings show that, even though they are more open and involved in discussions, which increases transparency, they generally do not use Twitter extensively. The main differences between the two types of journalists are in regard to routines, transparency and topic selection, self-promotion, and sharing personal information (Brautović et al. 2013).

Besides that, there are a number of different book chapters written in Croatian that problematize the topic. Content analysis of six Croatian mainstream online media tested the use of the commercial communication model, which is ultimately confirmed. The results show most of the analyzed media content was global and originated from the USA; content from foreign news agencies is translated and used as their own, while the Croatian National News Agency (HINA) contributes to the process of globalization (Brautović 2006). Further describing the tripartite model of the 21st-century path of the radio as a medium of the 20th century that faced multimedia surroundings and online communication, the doubt among scholars regarding the internet version of a radio as a new type of that medium, or a variation of a radio program, is highlighted. However, that new field implies the emergence of new terms that accompany new radio technology and production models such as streaming and podcasts (Mučalo 2010). In connection with TV, complex issues raised by the phenomenon of media convergence and digital news, in the context of television, such as convergent journalism, integrated newsroom, multiple journalism, citizen or participatory journalism, were explained (Perišin and Krajina 2020). Emphasizing the big changes raised by new technologies, among others, it clarifies that digital television formats also require multiskilling in terms of journalistic and productional competencies, which is why the videojournalist was introduced as a new position in the media industry. Further, a chapter defining new media and describing their general history, controversies regarding the internet and authorship, a short review of the beginning of internet journalism worldwide and in Croatia, types of Croatian mass media web content, and discussion about future challenges and opportunities were the main topics covered (Prelog 2011).

As for the book selection too, the adopted framework left many of them out. Here, we will only mention those that are among the first that were published in both countries. One of the first scientific monographs covering the topic of digital media and journalism in Slovenia is entitled Splet kot medij in mediji na spletu [Internet as a medium and online media] (Oblak and Petrič 2005). It analyzes the Internet as a communication system (the history of the Internet and the specifics of hypertext), a communication platform (media convergence, media logic and interactivity, media genres, and media users), social networks (examining the Slovenian part), and its potential. Additionally, it also brings comprehensive and detailed empirical research of Slovenian online media outlets at that time (its image, media consumption, online magazines’ production logic, similarities, and differences between daily newspapers and their online variation). In Croatia, the first book is entitled Online novinarstvo [Online journalism] (Brautović 2011). Divided into four chapters, the book covers all the important topics needed to understand the complexity of journalistic work in online media outlets, and it is still part of the obligatory literature for different courses in communication and media study programs in Croatia. Written according to the American model, besides theoretical, conceptual, and scientific parts, the book is visually attractive and contains a lot of practical examples that are structured as international and domestic case studies. It is, in particular, valuable because it summarizes all the Croatian online journalism’s current practice at that time, explaining its (dis)advantages and position in relation to world trends. Starting with the theoretical aspects and a historical overview of Croatian online journalism, media organizations, and media content, the author continues by describing its attributes (interactivity, multimodality, linking, archiving) in detail, forms (in specific textual online journalism form), and tools (photographs, sound, and video) used in planning and production (newsrooms, teamwork). The last two chapters focus on interactivity in online journalism (infographics, multimedia specials, interaction with the audience, and the process of covering breaking news) and online media as a part of the publishing industry (multi-platform publishing, multiskilled journalists, editing online news, the business models of online media outlets, and work organization).

Next, there are a number of comparative studies in which Croatian and Slovenian authors inspect the similarities/differences between their own and other, mostly European, countries. There is, for instance, a systematic analysis of newspapers’ journalistic attitudes to how the internet changes the journalistic role, professional work, and the importance of online journalism (Oblak Črnič 2007). This was part of the COST A20 project, European journalists and the Internet, for which a group of researchers analyzed the media content of three main dailies from different countries: Great Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, Greece, Lithuania, and Sweden. The findings from Slovenia show that, even though at the beginning of the 2000s the internet was integrated into Slovenian journalism as an information or communication tool, the critics remain. A skeptical view of online media origins is seen, mostly through the lenses of print media, while their use is perceived either as being a technical obstacle or as a journalistic assistant, and its effects are emancipatory (Oblak Črnič 2007).

Thirdly, we consider it important to place the found works in the regional environment of scientific production, which was not an easy task because it goes beyond the idea and scope of this work, and in addition, there are no collective findings.

We will begin with a comparison of review papers. Just one piece of such research was carried out in Serbia, as mentioned in the introduction (Ninković Slavnić 2019), containing articles different in categorization, written in both Serbian and English, and published in various sources, not just scientific journals. Since it is thematically limited only to the scientific production of audience research and differs from ours in key methodological guidelines and sampling, it was not suitable for drawing more specific comparative conclusions. However, it showed the main Serbian scientific preoccupations in that area: the peculiarities of the active audience, citizen journalism, the transformation of traditional media, online comments, seeing the online audience from the communicator’s point of view, fans, and the structure of the web space. Although the selected topics cover only a small fragment of the complex experience of the online audience, which is a reason to strengthen local empirical research, these results show similarities, in their study of individual topics, with the audience research we found in Croatia and Slovenia, which indicates common general research trends.

Since the lack of similar systematic reviews prevents discussion of this important aspect, we considered it necessary to conduct an additional search for empirical studies under the same requirements for this purpose only. In order to gain comparative insight, or rather to correlate Croatian and Slovenian scientific production in the local languages and journals with some other countries in the region, and not wanting to go too far beyond the scope of the work, we have investigated scholarly production on digital media and journalism only in Serbia and Montenegro, countries with similar linguistic heritage that we randomly selected.

With regard to the criteria set by this paper, the Montenegrin opus is the most limited one. If we were doing a wider comparative study, only two works would have been included, both relating to media content analysis. The first one inspected the content of European integration published on two ideologically opposed Montenegrin web portals, and they reported on practice and editorial policies (Ružić and Lučić 2016). Although the outcome indicated professional journalistic behavior and the most popular genres of writing were news and reports, the topics were covered as briefly as possible, without any analytical context or statements by officials. Little influence of editorial policy was seen on both portals, one of which, the public one, reports on European integration in Montenegro positively, while the oppositional one criticizes the government. The second one explores online commentaries under the umbrella of the journalistic articles of the two most visited online portals in Montenegro in order to discover how journalists and the readers of their articles related to traffic accident victims (Ružić 2018). The media often reveal the identity of casualties or details of the accident while, in most cases, anonymous members of the audience express their views, exchange opinions or ask questions, make sarcastic remarks, give details about the topic, write critically and offensively about the journalists, and the rights of the victims were violated only in a few cases. Those articles share an interest in the representation of the connection with the EU with the Slovenian author (Milosavljević 2014) and in relation to the digital trace with Croatian authors (e.g., Jakopović and Mikelić Preradović 2016; Feldvari et al. 2022; Vuković 2024).

The search, further, resulted in 10 Serbian empirical articles connected to digital media and journalism that thematized research objects that were comparable to ones in Croatia, Slovenia, and Crna Gora. Media and local and/or global topics closely related to the monitoring of the EU referendum on Great Britain’s membership in the European Union in 2016 (Milinkov and Šinković 2016), general topics in connection with the European Union (Pralica and Janjić 2016), and the presentation of the process of Europeanization and actors in the Serbian media (Drašković et al. 2016). There are also various other topics that are being investigated, such as feminist critical analysis of anti-gender discourses on informative portals in Serbia (Bobičić and Sojčić 2023), media reporting on the participation of the Serbian national team at the Football World Cup 2018 (Milinkov and Strika 2018), the identification of the dominant communication strategies used in the online media framing of the topic of violence against women in Serbia (Milutinović and Pavlović 2019), representation of reporting on culture (Dojčinović 2022), the organizational aspect of journalism, i.e., the working environment for professional development in conditions of profound technological change (Milivojević 2012). Lastly, there are two articles focusing on the local media in the Niš district in Serbia that explore the capacities, and strategies for, responding to the digital age’s challenges (Mihajlov Prokopović et al. 2020) and the economic position and capacities of the local media market (Vujović et al. 2020).

With the exception of Montenegro (2), the number of published works according to the given criteria in Croatia (12), Slovenia (11), and Serbia (10) is somewhat alike. These results can be explained by small scientific communities in which only individuals are engaged in research on these specific topics, the obligation to publish as much as possible in English and in international scientific journals with high impact in order to be most competitive, as well as the small number of scientific journals in the fields of journalism, media, and communication in local languages.

There are also thematical similarities between Montenegrin and Serbian articles, in particular in researching media content related to EU integration, both countries being candidates for membership in the European Union, and women’s rights.

The biggest difference, when compared to published works in other observed countries of the former Yugoslavia, is the methodological aspect. The results showed that Slovenian scholars are much more connected to media organizations and their work, which they often research, and they do so through direct contact with professionals. Results gained from such interaction indicate the multiple values and mutual benefits of the relationship between science and the profession. On the other hand, similar studies are rare in Croatia for at least two reasons. Primarily because most media outlets are not interested in conducting it, so Croatian scientists have turned to available research, such as the content of these digital media. Additionally, processed research was, in principle, not part of national or university scientific projects, which could indicate Croatian scientists are using this approach due to a lack of financial resources as well. Namely, content analysis is a low-cost method that does not require too many financial, human, material, or technical resources. However, it should be noted that Croatian scientists are expanding their scientific competencies, in addition to traditional qualitative content analysis, they are also conducting advanced content analysis using various computer programs and software.

The reliance of scientists in both observed countries on specific methods significantly reduces the comprehensiveness of the research opus. The fact that Croatian scholars research digital media and journalism mainly through the output, on the one hand, forces scholarship to draw only indirect conclusions about the profession, which further distances them, although, on the other hand, it could make media and journalists aware of the implications of their work. Therefore, these results can be an invitation to these Croatian communities to improve their relations for mutual benefit. More direct engagement with media professionals, such as in Slovenia, provides a greater possibility of media interest in the results of the conducted research and possible improvement of the production and/or work processes and regulations and gives an inside look at the latest professional tendencies, which also has a fruitful impact on the development of science.

Furthermore, although on the basis of this research, it is not possible to discuss with certainty the favored method of authors from Montenegro because only two articles were found, it is likely that they use content analysis as well. Lastly, besides being engaged in content analysis and interviewing media workers, Serbian scholars mainly conducted their research by discourse analysis, both qualitative-quantitative and critical.

5. Conclusions

The topic of our research was the representation of digital media and journalism in empirical research conducted by scientists in Croatia and Slovenia. Approximately 30 years after its advent, the Internet has been the most popular and major source of information for citizens around the world for some time, and the countries analyzed are no exception. We were interested in how this affected scientific production during that period of time.

One of the purposes of this paper is to present to the international scientific community empirical research published in local journals and in native languages that is largely unknown and unavailable elsewhere. Even though the number of scientific works analyzed is dictated by the limitations of this research, most of them were published in journals included in major international databases WOS and Scopus. Although no extensive literature written in local languages was found, and the first empirical studies were published only in the first decade of the 2000s, it can be concluded that scientific interests, topics, and methods developed in parallel with the profession, i.e., the status of digital media and journalism in that area. In the same way, this research is comparable to international ones because it reflects general scientific currents throughout this period in the field of digital journalism, both in terms of theoretical foundations and research subjects, as well as the methods used.

Since the excepting of publications written in the English language narrows the scope of this study, we strongly advocate their inclusion in future works for a more comprehensive understanding of the research landscape and more concretely represent the contributions of these academic communities to the field of digital journalism studies.

Another valuable contribution of this article is its role in fostering connections among regional researchers who are often confined within national frameworks and media environments. Comparative studies like this one are crucial for the establishment of regional networks, i.e., the development of regionally specific narratives, learning from mutual experiences, and the exchange of scientific discourses. Namely, even though key findings show Croatian and Slovenian scientific communities keep up with current international tendencies in the field of digital media and journalism, the study reveals disintegrated scientific interests and heterogeneous topics, which calls for a more systematic approach.

Therefore, we hope that this work will act as an incentive for other scientists to include in their systematic research data from the remaining countries of the former Yugoslavia for at least two particular reasons. The absence of review papers leaves a void in understanding the scholarly approach and conduct of the research in the field of digital journalism studies from these small communities. Further, this study has shown the existence of several points for legitimate comparison, one of which is a preference for a particular research method.

In addition, the recommendation to the Croatian and Slovenian scholars regarding actual publishing policies is that they should harmonize the criteria for the scientific categorization of articles, as a large part of the empirical research in local scientific journals is labeled as being a review article, preliminary communication, professional paper, or uncategorized. We believe that this would encourage scholars to engage in empirical research more often, to expand the range of methods they use, and to address the topics that they address.