Lindita Camaj, Erlis Çela, Gjylije Rexha, Journal of Information Technology & Politics (2024)

This study provides insights on how journalists in the Western Balkans conceptualize and practice audience engagement during electoral campaigns. Taking a holistic approach, we first explore audience demand and news supply of strategic and negative election news on Facebook, then turn to news editors to explore what type of audience logic drives their reporting. Our data confirm previous findings about audience demand for strategic news but contradict the predominance of audience negativity bias in the context of Southeast Europe. These findings support generic trends in how social media audiences engage with political information, but also emphasize the importance of the socio-political context as a determinant of audience engagement with online news. Interview data identified an alignment between journalists’ imagined readership preferences with the reality, yet reporting patterns on Facebook do not entirely follow engagement trends. Together, these findings suggest that journalism culture developed in this region is more nuanced than previously defined, while news editors embrace new technologies to serve the commercial needs and audience strengthening logics in parallel during electoral campaigns. ACCESS HERE.

Pjesivac, I., Petrov, A., & Camaj, L. (2023).
In Patricia Moy and Rico Neumann (eds.), Political Communication, Culture, and Society. New York: Routledge.

This book chapter examines the discourse about antigovernment protests “One of Five Million” in the public broadcaster in Serbia (RTS). Using Critical Discourse Analysis the study identifies lexical characteristics of the language used by RTS in its main newscast Dnevnik 2 to describe the protests and protestors while positioning them in the relevant political and media context. ACCESS HERE.

Summer Harrlow, Lindita Camaj, & Ivanka Pjesivac, The International Communication Gazette (2023)

In this study we explore how media clientelism in the Balkans and Latin America - whether manifested through political parallelism or media instrumentalization - produces incongruent protest narratives, depending on an outlet's ideological and economic interests. ACCESS HERE.

Lindita Camaj
Journalism (2021)

This study examines media coverage of the 2019 anti-government protests in Montenegro. Based on 13 in-depth interviews and a quantitative content analysis, the data shed light on ways in which democratization struggles are manifested via protest framing in a polarized media system. ACCESS HERE.

Lindita Camaj
Journalism Practice (2021)

Drawing on direct observation and in-depth interviews, this case study explores audience engagement practices within nonprofit newsrooms in South-East Europe, in order to elaborate on the impact of professional norms on such engagement in a complex media and political environment. ACCESS HERE.

Lindita Camaj
Global Media and Communication (2016)

This comparative study examines the power relationship between journalists and political elites in South-Eastern Europe, emphasizing the clientelistic ties under which these interactions take place. The results suggest that the journalist–politician relationship in these countries has gradually evolved into two-way communication marked by cooperation and conflict. ACCESS HERE.

Lindita Camaj
Journal of Broadcast and Electronic Media (2014)

The results of this study suggest that citizens in emerging democracies learn from the media about the efficacy and integrity of political institutions, and their performance on key issues. Consequently, this information becomes an important factor for trust formation and participation in different forms of political actions. ACCESS HERE.

Lindita Camaj
International Journal of Communication (2014)

This study explores how agenda-setting effects on institutional attributes and performance prime citizens’ trust in political institutions in a transitional society. ACCESS HERE.

Lindita Camaj
The International Journal of Press/Politics (2012)

This study measures the relationship between media freedom and corruption, accounting for elements of vertical accountability (electoral competitiveness, civil society, and voter turnout) and horizontal accountability (judicial independence and political system) in a sample of 133 countries. ACCESS HERE.

Lindita Camaj
In Tom Johnson (Ed) Agenda Setting in a 2.0 World: New Agendas in Communication. Rutledge Press. (2013)

This book chapter summarizes my dissertation project that examines the role of news media in affecting political culture in the post post-conflict and transitional society of Kosovo. ACCESS HERE.

Lindita Camaj
Journal of International Communication Gazette (2010)

This study investigates the persistence of news frames cross-nationally and over time by analyzing the international news agencies’ coverage of Kosovo’s status negotiations over a period of two years. ACCESS HERE.

Lindita Camaj
Central European Journal of Communication (2010)

This study suggests that during the 2007 campaign in Kosovo, political parties and mass media set the election agenda while disregarding the priorities of the public. However, neither media nor parties were able to set the public agenda independently. ACCESS HERE.

Ogan, C., Bashir, M., Camaj, L., Luo, Y., Gaddie, B., Pennington, R., Rana, S., & Salih, M.
Journal of International Communication Gazette (2009)

Through the technique of meta-analysis, this study investigates the scholarly articles appearing in peer-reviewed online and offline journals that address the topic of communication and development from 1998 to 2007 to determine publication trends in the field. ACCESS HERE.