Narratives on Croatian TV News: Using Narrative Analysis in Analyzing TV News

Car, V. (2011). Narratives on Croatian TV News: Using Narrative Analysis in Analyzing TV News. Novi Sad, Serbia: University of Novi Sad, Philosophical Faculty.

Abstract: Television news is a modern-day storyteller. When we watch television, we watch a series of messages (hidden in texts, pictures or sounds). Depending on news selection, presentation and framing, news shapes our identities, our attitudes toward the community, toward social, national and other minorities, and our general view on the world around us. Whether information is factual or fictional it has to be assembled into a narrative. The importance of narrative arises from the notion that all stories are ultimately framed by the prevailing cultural and political ideologies from which they are told. To analyze TV news as a story, as it is necessary to deconstruct the television news text, we use qualitative textual analysis. More precisely, we use narrative analysis which, as one tradition of qualitative approaches to texts, has its own kinds of inflection and concerns, having to do with latent structures and significant elements that structure meaning and position the reader. This paper examines the narratives on primetime news on Croatian public service television HTV and on national commercial television stations Nova TV and RTL. It analyses news structure, news text, sound and picture and examines how the broadcasts are formed into a story.