ŠOLSKO POLJE LETNIK XX (2009) ŠTEVILKA 5/6 str. 101-132 THE VOICE OF AN AGENDA-SETTING AUTHORITY - CONTENT CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DISCOURSE OF THE OFFICE OF THE HIGH REPRESENTATIVE IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA Danijela Majstorović 1. Introduction After the Bosnian war 1992-1995, the international community (IC) establis- hed a strong presence in the country and the Office of the High Representa- tive (OHR) was entrusted as the most powerful international body and ‘final authority in theatre’ regarding the implementation of Dayton and subsequent accession of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) into the European Union (EU). The OHR was created under the General Framework Agreement for Peace in BiH (Dayton Peace Agreement) of 14 December 1995 to oversee implemen- tation of civilian aspects of the Peace Agreement. The mission of the HR, also a Special Representative of the EU, is »to work with the people of BiH and the International Community to ensure that Bosnia and Herzegovina (hence- forth BiH) is a peaceful, viable state on course to the EU integration.« If press releases’ »only raison d’etre is to be retold...as accurately as possible, preferably even verbatim, in news reporting« (Jacobs, 1999: xi) and if its function is to compete for the mercy of different journalistic ga- tekeepers, then OHR’s press releases are quite a peculiar genre. Due to the position of this institution in BiH, they are guaranteed news and they im- mediately affect citizens or politicians. As such, they have the full power of perlocution (Searle, 1975) as they immediately impact the public and political life in BiH. Their newsworthiness is not decided by the BiH jour- nalists as their audience-directedness is inevitable, but by the concrete po- wer of the OHR given by the Bonn Declaration 1 and its subsequent inter- pretation. Their sole production and publication assure their appearing in the Bosnian print and broadcast news; they precede the news, and this 102 ŠOLSKO POLJE LETNIK XX ŠTEVILKA 5/6 makes it difficult for to define its already hybrid generic qualities (Majsto- rović, 2006: 131). In terms of its urgency and newsworthiness, press relea- ses of the High representative very much resemble royal decrees, except that today the Internet has replaced heralds. As only a small percentage of the BiH public uses the Internet 2 , these press releases were meant to be picked up by the news media, and they because of the supreme role of the HR, they made it into the central news without much competition, particularly the HR’s decisions on laws and removals. The qualitative content analysis of the Office of the High representati- ve (henceforth OHR) in Bosnia presents a preliminary insight in this large body of texts (Majstorović, 2006) primarily through its most frequent the- mes between 1996-2005. It is not however a media content analysis as the paper’s objective was not to measure the actual time given to the news on something that a HR did or said, but to see how and what this organization communicated to BiH public. If two press releases like the ones below In order to protect the Office of the President of the RS as an institution and the legitimate interest of the people of RS, the HR has removed Nikola Poplašen from the Office of the President of RS and forbids him to exercise any of the rights, privileges, and authorities of that Office. 5 March 1999 The High representative, Paddy Ashdown, today issued a decision removing Nikola Grabovac from his position of Minister of Finance for the Federation of BiH. Mr. Grabovac and his Ministry have been implicated in the AM Sped affair yet the Minister has refused to accept final political responsibility for the actions or inactions of his Ministry and step down from this position. “High representative removes Nikola Grabovac”, 14 June, 2002 were published on the OHR’s website or communicated at a press con- ference, most likely, they would make it to the central BiH news becau- se of its domestic affairs importance. On another lever, an international official’s removing a legitimately elected president of an entity would also be indicative of the two power relations: a) the role and authority of the OHR prescribed by the Dayton Peace Agreement and b) the OHR’s agen- da-setting capacity in Bosnian and Herzegovina’s public sphere shaping and contextualizing BiH’s reality. To examine how such discourse was possible in this particular spatio- temporal dimension, I will first provide contextual arguments on how such unprecedented authority was made possible and how the OHR’s agenda- setting role became visible through the dictate of prominent topics such as democratization and transition in BiH. Secondly, I will define what this agenda-setting capacity has meant and how this shaping and recontextu- 103 THE VOICE OF AN AGENDA-SETTING AUTHORITY - CONTENT CHARACTERISTICS ... alizing was actually done through discourse. Thirdly, I will show how the High representative (HR) used language to exert power in constructing democratization and transition, two most important IC objectives in BiH, through a selection of particular discourse topics. 2. Toward an interdisciplinary research agenda: discourse, politics and communication Although the language of democratization appears universal, its content today is a highly ideological one that qualifies liberal democracy in the sta- tes of Eastern Europe and justifies the interference of Western institutions into their domestic affairs (Chandler, 2000:7). The IC’s presence in BiH was on one hand the result of the numerous wars and contention in the Bal- kans and one could argue that it was needed as such. On the other hand, the IC mandate and actions have stepped out of line defined by Dayton, by being overtly authoritarian, situating this discussion in the realm of postco- lonial 3 and globalist theories (Flowerdew, 1997, Todorova, 1997). Press releases fall into the register of political communication, or po- litical discourse, as could the entire international community’s talk in BiH, and Wilson (2001: 398) warns of this danger when he says ‘all analyses of discourse are potentially political, and, that on one level, ‘all discourse analysis is potentially political’. This study does not claim that discour- se-analytical approach means reducing a social problem to its linguistic or communicative aspects; the language used by the High representative when talking about BiH or addressing the BiH citizens is the language of a dominant elite that struggles for primacy with languages of other, com- peting elites (the state, political parties, nongovernmental sector etc..) in the BiH public sphere. OHR’s press releases up until 2005 and later have been central in the mainstream BiH media discourse which is socially constructing BiH rea- lities. Although professional activities are characterized by special langua- ges, access to which is usually restricted to members of a given profession (Lakoff, R., 1990, Tannen, 1990), and political leaders use these langua- ges ‘to exert power over the general public and develop support for their policies’ (Kress, 1995 in Flowerdew, 1997: 454-455), the OHR’s discourse is not just ‘any’ institutional or professional discourse. It is relevant and worth studying because of the High Representative’s enormous influence in BiH even in 2009 as this organization was supposed to lead the country 104 ŠOLSKO POLJE LETNIK XX ŠTEVILKA 5/6 into a new era of its development, from socialism to capitalism, from post- war democratization into transition, from ‘Dayton to Brussels’. Any media text analysis can be seen as an analysis of cultural texts and Kellner (2003) proposes a useful three-pillar cultural research structure consisting of: • Political economy and production of culture (cultural texts) through studying ownership of media conglomerates, which subsequently means ownership of messages; • Cultural texts such as pamphlets, ads, and even OHR’s press releases. Textual analyses such as content analysis and discourse and critical discourse analysis (CDA) explain these texts through concepts of ide- ology, discourse type, narratives, semiotics, topics, formal linguistic characteristics etc. • Audience analysis (audiences are seen as heterogeneous and multi- ple): audience members are recipients of texts, which mean different things to different people, and cultural studies is interested in how audiences receive them. This research has to do with the second pillar as a preliminary step for a thorough CDA approach whose advantages were helpful in later more de- tailed analyses of the OHR press releases. As a press release is a borderli- ne genre between interpersonal and mass communication (Jacobs, 1999: 31), press release can be viewed as a genre or even media channel with a strong albeit not yet fully realized meaning potential. 3. Contextualizing the IC role in BiH- A Job without Alternative The ‘new democracies’ were seen as dysfunctional for many reasons such as deep cultural barriers and Bosnian democratization as a needed ‘noble experiment’ (Denitch, 1996: 60). There are different opinions about interna- tional involvement in BiH, but they are mainly divided into those who think there was no other alternative and those who think although there may have not been alternatives, the actual democratization process has been cata- strophic. Because of so much blood spilt in the name of nationalistic ideals, some critics say Western outsiders ‘are far better representatives of the ge- nuine interests of the Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian peoples and states than their patriotic leaders’ (Denitch, 1996: 32). The pretext for this is that new democratic societies are just inept, with ‘remarkably few legal, political, and 105 THE VOICE OF AN AGENDA-SETTING AUTHORITY - CONTENT CHARACTERISTICS ... civic skills...deep-seated prejudice...and have yet little willingness to recon- ceptualize their prejudices or anxieties in language familiar to Westerners’ (Fine, 1996: 559). Both of these opinions favor international intervention in BiH, which is seen as a course of action ‘without an alternative’. More recent and rather different opinions emerged later critiquing the ‘noble experiment’ as ‘a mockery of any meaningful concept of de- mocracy’ and a ‘grotesque parody of democratic principles’ (Carpenter, 1997 in Chandler, 2000: 158, 190). Paddy Ashdown has received much cri- ticism regarding his colonial-style politics, ‘running Bosnia like Raj’, and ‘making much greater use of his untrammeled powers as a ‘benevolent despot’ than his predecessors (Traynor, 2003). The critique of the ‘evan- gelic belief’ in imposing democracy from above and its similarities with the British East India Company was a theme of Knaus and Martin’s article ‘Travails of the European Raj’ (2003). With a great deal of caution and diffidence there has, however, been some systematic critique against the OHR policy in the realm of internati- onal relations but little in discourse and media studies. Western politicians have been blamed for their lack of accountability to BiH citizens. They have been forcing statehood upon the divided Bosnian ethnic groups at all costs and at the expense of society. Ten years after Dayton, there is no ‘positive peace’, as a form of cooperation and integration (Galtung, 1968 in Roach, 1993), but ‘negative peace’, as a mere lack of organized violen- ce between the main ethnic groups. A more detailed insight into the ina- dequacies of the Western efforts in terms of society building in Bosnia and Herzegovina and their subsequent inability to guarantee the BiH stability is given by Yordan (2003), who says the initial intervention of the EU and USA were led by their personal interests and not humanitarian ideals. American negotiators wrote the GFA with the assistance of Western Europeans and Russian diplomats. While the parties to the peace talks could debate these provisions, they were not allowed to make any substantive changes. Through diplomatic arm twisting, the U.S. forced the parties to sign the peace agreement, even though some of its provisions contradicted their self-interest. In the end, the GFA can be seen as an instrument of conflict settlement, rather than one of conflict resolution. It did not permit the leaders of ethno-national group to negotiate an ending to their war and it did not provide an incentive for Bosnia’s political leaders to address the very problems that had led them to war. Instead a settlement was forced upon them, angering many of Bosnia’s politicians and stripping them of their right to create a society that best represents their needs and interests (Yordan, 2003: 62). The Dayton Peace Agreement (GFA) in newly built Bosnian state was designed to stop the war and introduce capitalism and democracy as a 106 ŠOLSKO POLJE LETNIK XX ŠTEVILKA 5/6 new sort of modernity. But insisting on a market economy, without the so- cial cohesion, which was shown in a World Bank’s study (Yordan, 2003), is not and cannot be a guarantee of a self-sustaining peace. »As a result, the success of the present peace building operation should not be solely ga- uged by how much the economy grows, by how many bills are passed by the legislature, or by how many pro-GFA supporters are elected to public office (Yordan, 2003: 63). »Indeed, one of the major faults of the peace process is that international diplomats are not accountable to Bosnia’s citizens and their policies often disregard the opinions of the country’s political leaders« (Yordan, 2003: 71). This lack of consideration for the BiH political subjects, while run- ning a policy that eventually has to result in a modern state, and legiti- mizing ethno-nationalist leaders and their separatist politics while at the same time pursuing the idea of a strong state of BiH are probably two largest paradoxes of the OHR discourse which have subsequently created two very opposing and confusing messages to BiH citizens. To impose laws regulating civilian life without civic participation 4 , to create packets of laws aimed at strengthening ‘jobs and justice’ without input of BiH po- liticians (Knaus and Martin, 2003: 1), to ignore the country’s historic com- monalities, multiculturalism, memory and emancipatory potentials of the socialist Yugoslav past in a monologic imposition of liberal-democratic Bosnianhood from above without any plans of restoring the country’s genuine and full sovereignty; these are acts of colonization. These acts have been justified by the lack of democracy in BiH and have also been recontextualized as necessary steps for democracy and Europeanization, which is a rather circular logic. Even the concept of democracy has been an ideologically loaded one being upheld as »a universal aspiration...diffi- cult to obtain outside the developed and mature democracies of the West« (Chandler, 2000: 17). They behaved as if BiH was a clean slate on which liberal Western values were simply to be inscribed. An unprecedented amount of control resting with the HR has produced discursive relations of power and inequality between the participants and has also, as a result, affected their identities and social roles particularly when it co- mes to the noted lack of agency for BiH citizens and ‘progress from the above’ (Knaus and Martin, 2003: 68). This apparent progress is »no longer measured by free elections and constitutional frameworks, but on the basis of alleged cultural distinctions or ill-defined assessments of civil society...(which) has led to an increasingly qualified acceptance of liberal democracy in states outside 107 THE VOICE OF AN AGENDA-SETTING AUTHORITY - CONTENT CHARACTERISTICS ... the West...and the international regulatory bodies which are now overseeing the political process in the new democracies« (Chandler, 2000: 4). The OHR’s mandate was strengthened in 1997 by the Bonn Peace Im- plementation Council powers 5 , an ad hoc created body aiming to follow the implementation of GFA. The Bonn Declaration gave the HR the power to propose and adopt legislation when conflict among politicians stalled the legislative process, and to dismiss politicians who worked to prevent or de- lay the implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords. Carlos Westendorp, the second High representative who originally campaigned for the expan- ded mandate, and his successors Petritsch and Ashdown, have rewritten or imposed over 100 laws, spanning economic, social, political, and judicial issues, and have removed over eighty individuals from public office 6 « (Yor- dan, 2003: 61). Today, that number is over 150 individuals; only in June 2004, the HR Ashdown removed and conditionally removed around 60 individu- als from their public positions. In May 1999, Westendorp said to Wall Street Journal: »Yes, this disregards the principles of sovereignty, but so what? This is not the moment for post-colonial sensitivity...The problems of the region will only be solved when we have introduced a general respect for democra- cy and the rule of law« (Westendorp, 1999 in Chandler, 2000:201). In August 2009, in their rehabilitation process, some 53 were repealed by the current High Representative Valentin Inzko, as they were no longer seen to be a threat to peace implementation, institutional integrity or democracy. 4. Delineating the OHR discourse: the scope and the truth The discourse of the international community in BiH is vast and includes texts produced by other international organizations such as OSCE or UN IPTF, Dayton Agreement, press reports and public addresses to name but a few. After Dayton, which not only established international control over military forces on the ground but also put into practice a new, post-Cold War, international agenda for long-term peace-building. This new role for international institutions is increasingly described as democratization...a major international experiment in political engineering in BiH. (Chandler, 2000: 1-2). Although the role of the OHR was initially established to create long term peace and democracy, the OHR’s discourse was pregnant with discursive formations that were to be reenacted well before they were di- alogically articulated, surpassing and exceeding the formal boundaries of the Dayton. This analysis seeks to outline elements of discursive construc- tion of democratization and transition in the country by identifying and 108 ŠOLSKO POLJE LETNIK XX ŠTEVILKA 5/6 discussing prevailing discourse topics. Establishment of the OHR after Dayton, with its actions and interactions, is seen as a semiotic act in which the final word and interpretation of everything related to transition and future European integrations in Bosnia rests with the HR. Although discourses on democratization and transition have blurred boundaries, democratization or the so-called ‘post-war period’, conditi- onally speaking, began in 1996 and ended in 2000, when the transition stage began which still continues today. The OHR-style democratizati- on and, more recently, Europeanization discourses are rarely criticized except from an extremely nationalistic point of view. In a world where ‘social power is based on privileged access to socially valued resources, such as wealth, income, position, force, group membership, education or knowledge power’ (Van Dijk, 1993a: 254), it seems that BiH citizens either don’t have or don’t have enough of such power given the little resistance to OHR’s activities during the period. The reasons are plentiful: weak pu- blic opinion, corrupted and discredited politicians who are using popu- list rhetoric, the historical legacy of the Balkans as the Other, or mistrust and insecurity aggravated by the poverty typical for any post-war society. This type of discourse-as-social-interaction presumes subject positi- ons and through occupying them both the OHR and BiH citizens become what they are. In the same way, occupation of the aforementioned subject positions, i.e. the dominant (OHR) and the dominated (BiH citizens), reproduces and temporarily fixates a certain social order that, wrongly, appears to be commonsensical. In this situation, BiH politicians, althou- gh sometimes appearing hesitant to attract votes, cannot but agree to the OHR’s decisions which creates a culture of dependence. Via its Internet portal, the OHR informed the public, used strategies of positive self – and negative other-presentation (Majstorović, 2006), sanctioned, brought legi- slation or otherwise promoted political stances. To make their dominance more efficient, the OHR also used all modern communication resources available from press officers, through press releases and press conferen- ces where their statements appear in various frames and recontextualiza- tions (Bernstein, 1990), such as extradition of war criminals to ICTY fra- med as a necessary precondition for entering the EU or frequent appeals to intellectuals to help BiH accept the changes and transition. 109 THE VOICE OF AN AGENDA-SETTING AUTHORITY - CONTENT CHARACTERISTICS ... 5. Analyzing the data: definition of topic/theme Discourse topics are crucial for understanding of text and talk (Van Dijk, 1997: 10). It is »an intuitively satisfactory way of describing the unifying principle which makes one stretch of discourse ‘about’ something and the next stretch ‘about’ something else« (Brown and Yule, 1983: 70). For these reasons, the key rule in defining them was centrality of some pro- positions and concepts in relation to others (Tomlin, Forrest et al. in Van Dijk: 1997a). The study of semantic macrostructures of a text may show how propositions are ordered in hierarchical networks of importance, re- levance or conceptual dominance (Van Dijk, 1993b: 33). Themes or topics are primarily realized in headlines or lead paragraphs and they »define the overall coherence or semantic unity of discourse, and also what infor- mation readers memorize best from a news report« (Van Dijk, 1998: 248). The semantic representation cannot be systematically ‘reduced’ to produ- ce the discourse topic representation is provided; instead, one is required to go back to the original text and »make up a sentence which appears to summarize the main points in the piece of text, and then translate this sentence into a semantic representation« (Brown and Yule, 1983: 109). To identify topics and not the amount of airtime, I needed to become familiar with the corpus and then use corpus linguistics methodology. The data were downloaded from the OHR’s website by means of Teleport Pro and then processed by Wordsmith Tools software whereby two wordlists were created: a wordlist of the entire corpus and a wordlist comprising of headlines. These were compared with the reference corpus wordlist, which was Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations and some other texts in my textu- al archive, which made up a reasonably big list for calculating keyness 7 . I identified recurrent topics by investigating the contents of all the texts in the corpus and came up with a list that to a great extent coincided with the topics that were discussed in the HR’s special reports to the UN General secretary 8 . Then, to corroborate these findings, I analyzed headlines of over 1400 press releases between 1996-2004 and partly 2005, as these were the most direct way of addressing the BiH public, and came up with a similar list of key words that coincided with the previously defined topic category 9 . This reason why I combined the two calculations was because this methodology proved in many ways problematic: the keyword analyses were not clear-cut in the sense that they yielded a lot of function words. Another problems with the content analysis method was that it included a great deal of overlap between the topics as some fell into multiple catego- 110 ŠOLSKO POLJE LETNIK XX ŠTEVILKA 5/6 ries. If there was a topic that would fit in more than one category, I inclu- ded it in multiple categories 10 and provided charts for every topic’s annual distribution in Appendix 2. Interestingly enough, the keyword analysis showed a significant number of direct speech acts (Searle, 1975) or ex- plicit semi-performatives (Jacobs, 1999) 11 and due to their prominence, I decided to establish a separate ‘performatives’ category. These speech acts, when it comes to the HR, are almost all directives with full power of perlocution 12 . It was also problematic to decide if the discourse of the OHR started immediately upon Dayton in late 1995, in 1996 when it technically started, or in 1998, when the first decisions on removals and laws on national in- signia were passed? After the Office was formed in 1995, the OHR started with official press releases in 1996. The first releases were far fewer, less sophisticated and looked more like news reports. With the Bonn Powers and the strengthened OHR’s mandate in December 1997, Petritsch’s and Ashdown’s press releases sounded more similar to political and viceregal speeches (Kaminsky and Etz, 1999). The discourse of the ensuing High representatives, Schwarz-Schilling, Lajčak and Inzko, were not analyzed in this paper. 6. Research findings The results obtained by looking at keywords of the entire corpus in com- parison to the reference corpus were as follows 13 : 1. Wordsmith List of Keywords from the entire corpus (the first 20) N WORDFREQ. UKUPNA.TXT % FREQ. POREDBA1.TXT % KEYNESS P 1 THE 44,063 9.45 37,991 5.13 8,167.2 0.000000 2 REPRESENTATIVE 3,591 0.77 28 6,543.0 0.000000 3 BIH 2,884 0.62 26 5,221.9 0.000000 4 HIGH 3,873 0.83 472 0.06 4,854.9 0.000000 5 WILL 3,575 0.77 788 0.11 3,457.6 0.000000 6 BOSNIA 1,916 0.41 33 3,344.9 0.000000 7 HERZEGO VIN A 1 ,728 0.3 7 2 7 3,036.3 0.000000 8 BRCKO 1,247 0.27 0 2,372.7 0.000000 9 FEDERA TION 1 , 1 93 0.26 9 2, 1 72.6 0.000000 10 OHR 1,108 0.24 5 2,048.9 0.000000 1 1 IMPLEMENT A TION 1 ,0 1 7 0.22 1 2 1 ,8 1 5.8 0.000000 12 RS 1,001 0.21 14 1,770.2 0.000000 111 THE VOICE OF AN AGENDA-SETTING AUTHORITY - CONTENT CHARACTERISTICS ... 1 3 DISTRICT 92 7 0.20 1 4 1 ,63 1 .5 0.000000 1 4 A UTHORITIES 904 0. 1 9 22 1 ,533. 1 0.000000 1 5 A GREEMENT 892 0. 1 9 28 1 ,4 73.5 0.000000 16 PEACE 855 0.18 27 1,411.3 0.000000 17 LAW 1,787 0.38 573 0.08 1,343.7 0.000000 1 8 COUNCIL 8 70 0. 1 9 49 1 ,320. 1 0.000000 1 9 INTERN A TION AL 1 ,220 0.26 289 0.04 1 , 1 29. 1 0.000000 20 REPRESENT A TIVE 6 7 4 0. 1 4 22 1 , 1 08. 1 0.000000 2. Wordsmith List of keywords from the press releases’ headlines (the first 20) N WORD FREQ. KIKILIKI.TXT % FREQ. POREDBA1.DOC % KEYNESS P 1 REPRESENT A TIVE 49 4 3.7 1 4 2,7 6 1 . 1 0.000000 2 HIGH 522 3.92 58 0.03 2,597.1 0.000000 3 BRCKO 197 1.48 0 1,115.3 0.000000 4 BIH 190 1.43 26 0.01 919.8 0.000000 5 OHR 158 1.19 5 849.9 0.000000 6 ST A TEMENT 9 4 0.7 1 9 4 7 1 .5 0.000000 7 DISTRICT 85 0.64 1 469.8 0.000000 8 LAW 111 0.83 37 0.02 465.8 0.000000 9 SUPER VISOR 77 0.58 0 435.3 0.000000 1 0 FEDERA TION 60 0.45 3 3 1 5.3 0.000000 11 IMPLEMENTATION 57 0.43 1 312.1 0.000000 1 2 COUNCIL 58 0.4 4 3 304.2 0.000000 13 RS 65 0.49 14 295.3 0.000000 14 MEETS 51 0.38 0 288.2 0.000000 1 5 COMMISSION 52 0.39 1 284.0 0.000000 16 ON 3 23 2.42 1,608 0.76 280.7 0.000000 1 7 MOST AR 49 0.3 7 0 2 7 6.9 0.000000 18 OF 704 5.28 5,570 2.64 261.1 0.000000 1 9 WEL COMES 46 0.35 0 259.9 0.000000 20 APPOINT S 42 0.32 0 23 7 .3 0.000000 Few addresses to the HR were found in the corpus, or other-people quo- tations, which justifies this assumption. Some of the topics identified have not even made it into the ‘keywords’ as can be seen in the examples be- low. Srebrenica and Hague Tribunal, two very important topics of today, didn’t even make it to the top twenty keywords. They became more pro- 112 ŠOLSKO POLJE LETNIK XX ŠTEVILKA 5/6 minent after 2000, or in the ‘transition’ phase, whereas they had been al- most completely erased from the discourse of previous years. Chart 1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Srebrenica Chart 2 0 2 4 6 8 10 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Hague Tribunal (ICTY) Because keyword list 2 showed a number of explicit semi-performatives 15 , I decided to establish a special chart of ‘direct speech acts’ (Chart 3), as in these texts the HR ‘condemned, congratulated (Dayton anniversaries, 8th of March, Easter), expressed condolences, criticized, warned, or ‘was disturbed’ regarding the situation in BiH. During Wolfgang Petritsch’s ti- mes (1999-2002), there were a lot more ‘socializing’ speech acts (comme- morating, commiserating, wishing a happy holiday) and when it came to 113 THE VOICE OF AN AGENDA-SETTING AUTHORITY - CONTENT CHARACTERISTICS ... Paddy Ashdown’s discourse (2002-2005), there were more sanctions and removals. Chart 3 Removals of BiH officials and the HR’s introduction of legislation, imme- diately to become the law, were seen as separate topics. Chart 4a shows that removals of officials were most frequent in 1999, which is not true, as this charts is based on the number of published press releases that de- alt with removals, and not the number of removed individuals. Removals were most frequent in 2004 (see chart 4.b), but there weren’t that many press releases talking about each individual removal: the HR would remo- ve 60 individuals just in one press release. Chart 4a 0 2 4 6 8 10 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Remov als 114 ŠOLSKO POLJE LETNIK XX ŠTEVILKA 5/6 Chart 4b 0 20 40 60 80 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Remov als 25 topics were identified in over 1400 texts and their annual distribution is provided in Appendix 2: Refugees, return, collective centers; 1. Diplomacy, HR’s visits abroad, EU integrations; 2. Territories, police, army, intelligence, airports; 3. BiH courts and legislation; 4. High representative and BiH politicians/politics; 5. ICTY (the Hague tribunal); 6. OHR and HR’s decisions, laws, occupying premises; 7. Removals; 8. Social issues (health care, education, POW, culture); 9. Property issues and claims; 10. Events, openings; 11. Srebrenica; 12. Assaults and crime; 13. Reintegration and reconstruction, energy, resources; 14. Elections; 15. Media; 16. Human rights; 17. Brčko district; 18. 115 THE VOICE OF AN AGENDA-SETTING AUTHORITY - CONTENT CHARACTERISTICS ... Economy and inter-entity cooperation; 19. OHR bureaucracy; 20. Region; 21. Donations; 22. State symbols and insignia, citizens’ documents; 23. Addresses to the OHR 24. Corruption, drugs, trafficking. 25. This preliminary content analysis showed that most prevalent topics are those about the OHR’s communication with local and international politi- cians, Peace Implementation Council, UN (Diplomacy, HR’s visits abroad, EU integrations), or topics such as Brčko district, property claims and social issues. Topics were analyzed not so much in terms of their prominence but more as trends, e.g. the property claim issues related to displaced people, for instance, entered the discourse in 1998, peaked in 2002, when the HR Petritsch brought a packet of laws related to this subject. Later, there was a decline of their topical prominence in 2004, as people mostly managed to reclaim their property or to resolve their property issues in another way. Chart 5 Going back to 1996 and the 1 st HR, Carl Bildt, there were fewer removals, laws etc., which is logical given that 1996 was the first post-war year. Some press releases also announced that local politicians did not fully under- stand what they were supposed to do or how to act so they would even ‘forget’ to show up at meetings. 116 ŠOLSKO POLJE LETNIK XX ŠTEVILKA 5/6 For the second week in a row, Republika Srpska Prime Minister Gojko Kličković failed to turn up at the meeting of the Joint Interim Commission this afternoon. This was in spite of explicit undertakings to come and in spite of the time and place of the meeting being agreed. “Statement by the High representative Carl Bildt”, June 25, 1996 The most dominant topics were refugees, elections, then a novelty in BiH, regulation of property claims and so forth. As in 1997, there were more assaults and criminal incidents, but also more talks on the reintegra- tion and restructuring of the country; a trend that declined in later years. As was seen earlier, topics such as ‘Srebrenica’ and ‘ICTY’ had been intro- duced whereas they did not exist prior to 2000 and their frequency was steadily growing towards 2004. 1998 was a year of high increase in decision making in terms of the state symbols and insignia relevant to the BiH state identity such as licen- se plates, first passports, the flag, the coat of arms, the currency etc. After local politicians could not agree about these things, the HR of the day ‘had’ to make these decisions as well. The year 1997 marks an increase in direct speech acts, a trend that more or less continued until 2005. Speech acts of ‘congratulation’, be it New Year, 8 th of March, or Dayton anniversa- ry, were most frequent during Wolfgang Petritsch’s time. In comparison with other HRs, Petritsch seemed to have a more personal and warmer tone but he also removed people, annulled decisions and issued edicts. Judging by their verbal acts, the power to make and freedom to interpret laws, meetings with the highest international and BiH officials, and the decisions published in the RS or Federation Official Gazettes, the HRs ge- nerally behaved more like BiH presidents than international envoys. The High representative, Carlos Westendorp, yesterday issued a Decision suspending the power of authorities in both Entities to re-allocate and dispose of certain types of socially-owned land... The High representative has taken this Decision after extensive research and consultation as to the problematic nature of the current legislation and the misapplication... His Decision is effective as of May 26, 1999, and shall be published in the Official Gazettes of the Entities. “Decision on Socially- Owned Land”, 27 May 1999 The High representative, Wolfgang Petritsch, today met with a senior delegation from the European Commission’s Directorate for External Relations, headed by the Director, Mr Reinhardt Priebe. The delegation is visiting Bosnia and Herzegovina to discuss assistance to the country within the EU’s five-year Regional and Country Strategy. “High representative meets European Commission delegation”, 20 July, 2001 117 THE VOICE OF AN AGENDA-SETTING AUTHORITY - CONTENT CHARACTERISTICS ... Petritsch was the one who tried to deny the claims of protectorate in BiH by introducing the concept of ‘ownership’, or a sense that Bosnians sho- uld be accountable for what was happening in their country. ‘Ownership’ initially planned to ‘give people the feeling that this is their country’ by allowing Bosnian leaders more say (Kaminski and Etz, 1999), but the pro- blem was that Petritsch was very choosy which leaders he felt should have a say (Chandler, 2000: 202). In terms of removals and decision making for ‘obstructing Dayton’ or for ‘the lack of cooperation with ICTY’, the content analysis has shown Paddy Ashdown to be the most active HR. That trend had two peaks: in 2002 when Ashdown came to power, and especially in 2004 with more and more individuals removed without any public disclosure of the su- pporting evidence and with a general lack of transparency. To illustrate the much debated ‘removals’, here is a typical format of a removal decisi- on, which later on became much more formal and ritualized and had gre- ater reference to the powers enabling a HR to do it 16 . The ‘removal’ trends can be seen in Chart 6. The High representative has written this morning to Dragan Čavić, Vice-Chairman of the SDS, notifying him of his decision to remove him from office in the newly elected Republika Srpska Assembly, using the authority vested in him by the Bonn Peace Implementation Council. Mr Čavić is also barred indefinitely from holding further official positions in BiH. “High representative removes SDS vice-Chairman Čavić from Office”, October 08, 1998 Chart 6. 0 50 100 150 200 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 HR's decisions 118 ŠOLSKO POLJE LETNIK XX ŠTEVILKA 5/6 7. Depths of critical discourse analysis versus breadths of content analysis Content analysis has been very helpful for definition of topics, but even results obtained cannot sufficiently account for the subtler ideological processes in texts. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) can give more detai- led explanations of such relations and therefore is a logical continuation of any content analysis; where a content analysis gives breadth and gene- ral feeling, a CDA framework provides depth of details of vaguer notions such as ideologies, beliefs, coercion but also strategies of representation, mitigation and justification encoded in the actual language use. While content analysis tells us if a removal happened it doesn’t tell us how it ha- ppened, i.e. how it was constructed in the text. The text below: You will be aware that at the request of the High representative the NATO Secretary General and the SACEUR have authorized SFOR to occupy and control a number of Broadcasting Facilities in the RS. This action took place this morning. This action was taken following the grotesque distortion of the press conference with Judge Louise Arbour, which was broadcast by SRT on Sunday, 28 September. The High representatives recommendation was made on the basis of the mandate given to him under the terms of the Sintra Declaration specifically paragraph 70 which empowers him to act against any media outlet whose output is in persistent and blatant contravention of either the spirit or letter of the Peace Agreement. The apology and rebroadcast of Judge Arbour’s interview by SRT was, although welcome, frankly too little too late. In our statement last night we made it clear that further action was under consideration. “NATO Secretary-General and SACEUR at the request of the HR authorized SFOR to occupy and control a number of Broadcasting Facilities in the RS”, October, 1, 1997 is about an act of SFOR’s occupation of the broadcasting facilities. It can be coded as a topic ‘OHR decisions, laws, occupying premises’ but no con- tent analysis would reveal that such a decision was presented as completely commonsensical at the time. SFOR, at the request of the HR Westendorp, committed the act of open coercion as a result of the Republic Srpska’s main media ‘distorting’ Louise Arbour’s press conference broadcast followed by a journalist’s commentary. The year 1997 was certainly not the prime time of BiH media’s objectivity and professionalism and although the SRT, perhaps reluctantly, came with an apology, this was still considered to be ‘frankly too little too late’. Through the combination of an adjunct expressing the speaker’s attitude followed by a metaphor with a condescending overtone, OHR made a case and justified a military seizure of SRT on the premises of bad journalism legitimizing it as a threat to Dayton and democratization. Not only did this language speak of a one-time sanction but of a contingency 119 THE VOICE OF AN AGENDA-SETTING AUTHORITY - CONTENT CHARACTERISTICS ... plan in case similar things happened in the future enacted in a semi-perfor- mative of warning committing to ‘further action...under consideration’. In the following paragraph, it is not stated what powers or international provisions authorize the OHR and SFOR to act and occupy the premises of a bank that has been involved in illegal business operations. If BiH citizens were to construct their social identities from this text, they would be even more pas- sivized seeing that none of the local police or authorities are mentioned, and would probably be misled to believe that the OHR has the power to do it and will do it instead. The linguistic choices used to describe this joint activity are particularly interesting as there are traces of military/secret service discourses (e.g. the operation was well-planned and well-executed, SFOR maintained a safe and secure environment, there was no outside-interference etc.). Early this morning, representatives of the Office of the High representative, with the strong support of SFOR, entered the main branch of Hercegovačka Banka in Mostar, retrieving documentation required by the Provisional Administrator, Toby Robinson. The operation was well-planned and well-executed. While SFOR was maintaining a safe and secure environment, the needed bank records and vaults were secured. There was no outside-interference.” High representative welcomes operation securing records of Hercegovačka Banka”, April, 18, 2001 A great deal of OHR’s main topics dealt with removals and bringing new legislation which were justified with the negative Other representati- on of BiH politicians by distinguishing between the good (European) and the bad (Balkan) principle: “The Balkans as a pejorative term have returned to themselves, and among the Balkan nations there is a competition over which one belongs to the Balkans, which means is lost, and which one has managed to escape the dirt, corruption and hatred of the Balkans and can be counted as a part of Europe, that means of civilization.” This also goes for Bosnia and Herzegovina... I believe this is the only way in which BiH can become a democratic, self-sustaining and self-confident state. This is the essence of Europeanization. “The HR discusses Protectorate in DANI, This is not our country”, 3 March 2000 In his discussion of the Bosnian protectorate, the HR Petritsch quotes an Austrian source, Karl Markus Gauss, who happens to be a Balkans expert. This is also a hortatory report as it implicitly prescribes a norm through a set of descriptions of what the norm is. As Petritsch himself is considered to be an expert on the Balkans, Gauss’s credibility and critical statements about BiH are not brought into question. After the quotation, Petritsch says ‘it is the only way for BiH to become a democratic, self-sustaining and self-confident state’ and that this is ‘the essence of Europeanization.’ 120 ŠOLSKO POLJE LETNIK XX ŠTEVILKA 5/6 Argumentation sche- mes/higher level seman- tic relations Rhetorical devices/lingui- stic means Examples negative other-represen- tation presupposition: The Bal- kan used to mean some- thing bad and now it is true again The Balkans as a pejorative term have returned to them- selves... negative other-represen- tation positive Europe repre- sentation irony: Who would compete to become a member of so- mething that is bad? implicature: one who be- longs to the Balkans is lost topos of comparison (tho- se belonging to the Balkans and those who have esca- ped), presupposition: the Balkans is dirty, corrupted and full of hatred, negative semantic context and among the Balkan na- tions there is a competition over which one belongs to the Balkans which means is lost and which one has managed to escape the dirt, corruption and hatred of the Balkans and can be counted as a part of Europe, that means of civi- lization The sentence ‘the Balkans as a pejorative term’ presupposes the long-term negative legacy of the Balkans, which ‘has again returned’, which is a rather personal and ungrounded individual authority claim. The metaphor of com- petition over who ‘belongs to the Balkans’ is used in an ironic sense where- by the already negative semantic context surrounding the Balkans-as-synec- doche is stressed to create an even further distance from the region and its entailments for who would compete to stay in its dirt and corruption. The elaboration of this claim in the following sentence is also interesting beca- use a value judgment is made between the lost and uncivilized who remain in the Balkans and those who have escaped its dirt, corruption and hatred and can be counted as a part of Europe, that means of civilization. This is a hegemonic meaning-making; in the HR’s words Europeanization, under the international community’s terms and supervision, becomes the only way in which BiH can become democratic, self-sustaining, and self-confident. The biblical reference of salvation is also tacitly present: the verb escape (esca- pe- succeed in getting away or breaking free from, flee) is connected with getting away from something negative or binding while the noun escape is synonymous with flight (noun) and translates into Serbian as ‘save oneself’. By this analogy ‘escaping the Balkans’ could translate as an act of salvation. While there is little self-criticism in the OHR discourse, there is a lot of negative other-presentation. The more negatively presented BiH or its politicians are, the longer and more justifiable the mandate of the IC and 121 THE VOICE OF AN AGENDA-SETTING AUTHORITY - CONTENT CHARACTERISTICS ... OHR. Through negative other-presentation, the OHR usually provides an alternative reflected through western, liberal-democratic values, claiming it is only done ‘in the BiH’s citizens’ best interest.’ In an unprofessional manner and with very few exceptions, local media have conducted a campaign of disinformation, if not an outright smear campaign, based on biased, incomplete or simply wrong information with the apparent goal to confuse and alarm the public...”Textbook Review in the Canton of Sarajevo”, 4 November 1998 In this example, the HR justifies its role by assigning the chronic inability and negligence to the local politicians. This is a very general statement, but there are some interesting lexical choices to discuss. Deadlines have not been met, commitments have not been fulfilled etc. so the situation is total chaos and the HR is needed to put the place in order. In the paragraph below, local politicians are not regarded as people of authority nor are they respected. I could produce a long list of deadlines that have not been met, commitments that have not been fulfilled, minutes of important meetings during which the officials of this country have done nothing but to bicker and squabble and play babble games. “New Year’s Message to BiH Citizens”, 31 December 1999 Politicians are ascribed ‘feminine qualities’: they ‘do nothing but bicker, squabble and play babble games.’ Aside from the OHR’s discourse being chauvinistic in general, here are some collocations for bicker, squabble and play babble games. from the Internet and traditional dictionaries such as Merriem-Webster and Collins Cobuild. e.g. Though the two women bicker and tease each other, they are obviously old friends. The women bicker, prattle, and flirt like characters out of Tennessee Williams or Eugene O’Neill. e.g. My four-year-old squabbles with his friends. Here are 8 tips for keeping the child squabbles away this season. In reality, today’s misguided parents even interfere in their child’s squabbles with other children. e.g. Mona babbled on and on about her new boyfriend. Baby Annabel makes realistic mouth movements and sucking sounds when drinking from her bottle, she babbles and giggles and when you rub her tummy. Crystal just sits a few feet away smiling sadly as she babbles. 122 ŠOLSKO POLJE LETNIK XX ŠTEVILKA 5/6 Given these verbs’ collocates, they primarily seem to refer to arguing over petty things while bicker and squabble as near synonyms seem to colloca- te a lot with women. Babble refers to uttering words in an incoherent way but can also imply ‘irrelevant or foolish utterance,’ which , when used for men, can imply a lack of seriousness and even masculinity. 8. Conclusion The ways in which Bosnian reality is shaped and modeled from the out- side are very disputable in terms of the power relations at work, while BiH still lacks strong public opinion which is respected, measured, and on the basis of which politicians and their constituents should act. This pre- liminary research puts some of these problems in perspective, providing context and opening space for further discourse analytical investigations especially since 14 years after Dayton BiH society is still fragile with the OHR still present. To do a solid analysis of discourse as social interaction that would account for discourses, processes and participants, one needs to respect triangulation consisting of heavy contextualization from other disciplines, careful linguistic methodology but also a series of more detai- led textual analysis. For media texts, content analysis can be used as a pre- liminary, but it cannot fully account for the many and complex strategies of political communication. Notes [1] Bon Peace Implementation Council Declaration of 1997 further extended the Dayton powers of the HR. It is an extensive 26-page list of internationally prepared legislative measures...(which) covered policy-making powers at both state, entity and municipal level; intervening in order to regulate policy on housing, education, the legal system. citizenship, travel, the constitution, refugee return, policing, the media, electoral regulation, economic reconstruction and regional relations...extending right down to requirements for the Bosnian sports teams at the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan (PIC, 1997b, section II, 3)« (Chandler, 2000: 157). [2] Estimated internet penetration in BiH was around 20, 3 in 2007. (http:// www.internetworldstats.com/euro/ba.htm) [3] Postcolonialism is used here to refer to the Third World countries and the Balkans are also considered in this category. [4] See press release »Textbook Review in the Canton of Sarajevo«, 4 November 1998 at www.ohr.int 123 THE VOICE OF AN AGENDA-SETTING AUTHORITY - CONTENT CHARACTERISTICS ... [5] See Appendix 1 [6] See Appendix 2 [7] Key words are obtained by comparing the words in the text with a reference set of words usually from a larger corpus. Any word which is found to be outstanding in its frequency in the text is considered ‘key’. [8] OHR’s own categorization of topics, in their rapports to other foreign organizations, can be seen, for example, in the 14th Report by the High representative for Implementation of the Peace Agreement to The Secretary- General of the United Nations, 16 July 1999, APRIL - JUNE 1999, available at www.ohr.int [9] Their annual distribution was provided in Appendix 3. [10] For example, when a press release was titled ‘Brčko supervisor, Henry L. Clarke, halts privatization in Brčko district’, 14 August 2001, we would put it in three categories: ‘Brčko’, ‘economics’, and ‘OHR decisions, laws, occupations’. [11] These are .e. verbs in past simple used by the HR such as removed, welcomed, imposed etc. Due tot he prominence of self-quotation and 1 st and 3 rd person self reference typical for press release genre (Jacobs, 1999), the conclusion was these actions referred to the HR. [12] In speech acts theory (Searle, 1969, 1975, Austin, 1978), an illocutionary act implies the performance of an illocution such as, for example, declaring a removal of a person (directive speech act). Where illocution is an act performed in saying something, in contrast to a locution as an act of saying something, eliciting an answer is an act performed by saying something, which Austin calls perlocution. By saying that he removes an individual, the individual in real life is removed and that means that OHR’s word is the law and that illocutions (and locutions) also have the immediate power of perlocution. [13] To calculate keyness, I compared the entire corpus with the reference corpus list, which yielded a lot more function words and general words and nouns from the general register. In the second list, I compared press release titles as they almost always contained a verb. This proved to be the most relevant way of testing because of the corpus size. When I cross-referenced both of these lists, I found that a number of key words were present in both, at least the first 20 or so, and modal verb will made it to the ‘very high’ fifth place (this modal did not occur as a key word in the titles’ list), so I included it here. [14] Verschueren (1999) uses the term explicit semi-performatives to include performatives (illocutionary speech acts), which are not 1 st person present tense. [15] Example of more ritualized ‘removal’ and other decisions can be found at www.ohr.int under the link HR’s decisions. 124 ŠOLSKO POLJE LETNIK XX ŠTEVILKA 5/6 References Brown, G. and Yule, G. (1983) Discourse Analysis. Cambridge, London, Portchester Melbourne, Sydney: Cambridge University Press. Chandler, D. (2000) Faking Democracy After Dayton. London: Pluto Press. Denitch, B. (1996) Ethnic Nationalism: The Tragic Death of Yugoslavia (revised edn). London: University of Minnesota Press. Fairclough, N. (1989) Language and Power. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (2005) ‘Transition’ in Central and Eastern Europe. British and American Studies Timisoara: University of Timisoara 11/2005, pp. 9-34. Fine, K (1 997) ‘Fragile Stability and Change: Understanding Conflict During Transitions in East and Central Europe’. Presenting Conflict in the Post-Communist World. Chayes, A. and Handler Chayes, A. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, pp. 541-589. Flowerdew, J. (1997) ‘The Discourse of Colonial Withdrawal: A Case Study in the Creation of Mythic Discourse’. Discourse and Society 8 (4): 453-477. Jacobs, G. (1999) Preformulating the News. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Kaminsky, M. and Etz, W. (1999) ‘Viceroy Petritsch Strives to Make Hobbled Bosnia Into ‘Viable State’. Wall Street Journal, 27 December. Keenan, E. O. and Schieffelin, B. (1976) Topic as a Discourse Notion in (ed). C.N.Li Kellner, D. (2003) ‘ Cultural studies, multiculturalism, and media studies’. in Dines, G. and Humez, J.M. ed. (2003) Gender, Race, and Class in Media 2nd edition (pp.9- 21). London, New Delhi: Sage Publications. Knaus, G and Martin, F. (2003) ‘Lessons from Bosnia and Herzegovina: Travails of the European Raj’. Journal of Democracy, Vol 14 (3), 3 July. Lakoff, R. (1990) Talking Power: The Politics of Language in our Lives. New York: Basic Books. Majstorović, D. 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London, New Delhi, Newbury park: Sage Publications Inc. 125 THE VOICE OF AN AGENDA-SETTING AUTHORITY - CONTENT CHARACTERISTICS ... Van Dijk, T. (ed.). (1997) Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction: Discourse as Structure and Process and Discourse as Social Interaction: Vol.1 (1997a) and Vol.2 (1997b) London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage. Van Dijk, T. (1998) Ideology - A Multidisciplinary Approach. London: Sage. Verschueren, J. (1999) Understanding Pragmatics. London, New York: Arnold. Volosinov, V.N. (1973) Marxism and the philosophy of language. New York: Seminar Press. Westendorp, C (1999) ‘Lessons Bosnia Taught Us’. Wall Street Journal, 19 May. Yordan, C.L. (2003) ‘Society Building in Bosnia: A Critique of Post-Dayton Peacebuilding Efforts’. Seaton Hall Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations. Summer/Fall 2003. www.ohr.int www.internetworldstats.com/euro/ba.htm Appendix 1: PIC Bonn Conclusions, 10 December 1997 ... The Council welcomes the High representative’s intention to use his final authority in theatre regarding interpretation of the Agreement on the Civilian Implementation of the Peace Settlement in order to facilitate the resolution of difficulties by making binding decisions, as he judges necessary, on the following issues: a. timing, location and chairmanship of meetings of the common insti- tutions; b. interim measures to take effect when parties are unable to reach agre- ement, which will remain in force until the Presidency or Council of Ministers has adopted a decision consistent with the Peace Agree- ment on the issue concerned; c. other measures to ensure implementation of the Peace Agreement throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina and its Entities, as well as the smooth running of the common institutions 1 . Such measures may in- clude actions against persons holding public office or officials who are absent from meetings without good cause or who are found by the High representative to be in violation of legal commitments made under the Peace Agreement or the terms for its implementation. 1 This provision is very vague and it is up to the HR to interpret it as he sees fit. 126 ŠOLSKO POLJE LETNIK XX ŠTEVILKA 5/6 Appendix 2– distribution of discourse topics by the years 1996- 2004 (charts) Chart 1 0 5 10 15 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Refugees, return, collective centers Chart 2 0 5 10 15 20 25 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Diplomacy, HR abroad, EU Chart 3 0 5 10 15 20 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Territories, police, military, intelligence, airports 127 THE VOICE OF AN AGENDA-SETTING AUTHORITY - CONTENT CHARACTERISTICS ... Chart 4 0 5 10 15 20 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 BiH courts and legislation Chart 5 0 10 20 30 40 50 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 HR and BiH politicians, politics Chart 6 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 OHR's decisions and law s, occupying premises 128 ŠOLSKO POLJE LETNIK XX ŠTEVILKA 5/6 Chart 7 0 5 10 15 20 25 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Social issues Chart 8 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Property issues Chart 9 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Events, openings 129 THE VOICE OF AN AGENDA-SETTING AUTHORITY - CONTENT CHARACTERISTICS ... Chart 10 0 2 4 6 8 10 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Assaults Chart 11 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Reintegration and reconstruction, energy, resources Chart 12 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Elections 130 ŠOLSKO POLJE LETNIK XX ŠTEVILKA 5/6 Chart 13 0 2 4 6 8 10 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Me d ia Chart 14 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Human rights Chart 15 0 10 20 30 40 50 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Brèko district 131 THE VOICE OF AN AGENDA-SETTING AUTHORITY - CONTENT CHARACTERISTICS ... Chart 16 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Economy and interentity cooperation Chart 17 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 OHR bureaucracy Chart 18 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Region 132 ŠOLSKO POLJE LETNIK XX ŠTEVILKA 5/6 Chart 19 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Donations Chart 20 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 State symbols and insignia, citizens' documents Chart 21 0 2 4 6 8 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Corruptions, drugs, trafficking