Vitriolic Journalism and Affective Bias: A Computational Sentiment Analysis of Serbia’s Informer

Srđan M. Jovanović

doi:10.18778/1427-9657.14.1.03

Authors

Srđan M. Jovanović Nankai University https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2612-4733

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1427-9657.14.1.03

Keywords:

affective partisanship, tabloid journalism, sentiment analysis, RoBERTa, Serbian media, Informer

Abstract

This study examines the emotional tenor of Serbian tabloid journalism through a computational analysis of political columns authored by Dragan J. Vučićević, the editor of Informer, a newspaper broadly recognised for its partisan alignment with Serbia’s ruling party. Drawing on sentiment analysis using VADER and RoBERTa, the research investigates the prevalence and intensity of negative affect as a vehicle of political bias and discursive hostility. The combined methodological approach leverages lexicon-based and transformer-based tools to measure sentiment polarity and model confidence, producing a comparative account of emotional aggression in contemporary media discourse. The results reveal consistent extreme negativity across the corpus, with variability in rhetorical intensity detected by deep learning. Situating the findings within scholarship on affective partisanship, propaganda, and tabloidisation, the article contributes to methodological innovation in journalism studies and offers a data-driven perspective on the performative role of sentiment in democratic backsliding.

Author Biography

Srđan M. Jovanović, Nankai University

Srđan M. Jovanović is an interdisciplinary historian, social theorist, and political scientist, living and working in Tianjin, China, as Associate Professor at the College of History, Nankai University. Prior to moving to China, had taught and/or conducted research at Lund University (Sweden), the Polish Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Advanced Study (Poland), Palacky University Olomouc (the Czech Republic), University of Košice (Slovakia), New Europe College (Romania), and Istanbul Sehir University (Turkey). He is the author of over 50 research articles and several books, as well as the holder of numerous fellowships, grants, and scholarships at international levels. He speaks English, Serbo-Croatian, Czech, and Swedish, with working knowledge of Russian, German, Polish, Slovak, Italian, and Mandarin.

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