Online Journalism - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

98 Online Journalism
access at schools and universities. Many of the providers waived their
fees during the period of the air strikes. If the demographics of early
Internet take-up in the USA and Britain can be extrapolated to the
Serbian population most users at that time were quite affluent and
with liberal inclinations, although in a Balkan context that seems to
imply no lessening of nationalistic fervour.
We get a flavour of this constituency from Veran Matic, editor-inchief
of the original Radio B92 in Belgrade. He saw B92, the
independent radio station, as a ‘self-defence project’ for a quite privileged
minority, many of whom would have been able to follow the
radio station on to the web when it was eventually suppressed by the
Milosevic regime. ‘The most creative elements of the society had
come to be associated with B92: artists, writers, theatre companies,
the feminist movement, contemporary musicians – all of them found
a creative outlet under the umbrella of B92.’ 3 What is certain is that
the war brought unprecedented numbers of consumers online in the
Balkans. BBC News Online experienced five-fold increases in traffic
from the Balkans and CNN.com achieved some of the heaviest traffic
in its history with between five- and ten-fold increases in Balkan use. 4
B92 escaped state control by operating for the first nine years of its
existence on an unlicensed frequency. For nearly a decade prior to the
Kosovo War, it had routinely reported political protest within the
Yugoslav Republics. It was often jammed and its transmitter, limited
by the Yugoslav Telecommunications Ministry to 300W, was so weak
that it barely covered the centre of Belgrade although other independent
Serbian radio stations regularly rebroadcast its programmes. As
the regime stepped up its harassment of B92, regular broadcasts
continued to be streamed on to the web from service providers
outside the Balkans. They were taken up by the BBC World Service
and the Voice of America and broadcast back to Serbia on short wave.
During the period when B92 was placing updated material on the
web it was receiving nearly two million hits and 700 to 800 emails a
day from its audiences. 5 Another radio station claiming to be B92,
but offering programming markedly less inimical to the Belgrade
regime, resumed broadcasting on a powerful transmitter from within
Serbia on 2 April shortly after the suppression of Veran Matic’s
organisation. That succession had been recognised by the staff of B92
long before the event in their slogan, ‘Don’t trust anyone, not even
us!’ They continued to argue and demonstrate for it after its suppres-