The Twenty-First Century, the Reign of Tabloid Journalism

AbstractThe twenty-first century is the century of tabloid journalism. In Serbia, the number of scientific papers on this type of journalism has recently increased. Investigators of media and media markets are confronted with constant changes of their object of study. Besides the media contents which change daily, media technology, legislation and the audience are also constantly changing. This happens due to complex demands of the modern world. Some authors define the tabloid press as a form of commercial media culture created for profit and distributed in the form of goods whose products are going to sell well because of their factual popularity. As part of popular journalism, tabloidisation means creating the product which attracts the maximum number of customers. The emergence of such products which shocked the world by breaking with the conventions led to the creation of a new form of media literacy, whose celebrities replaced the old values of life and way of thinking, creating new models of identification and resonant performances of style, fashion and behavior. Since profit and not ethics is the deepest motivations of tabloid journalism, some authors of tabloids do not consider them among traditional print media, rather placing them in a separate category defined as consumerist magazines. This subcategory develops rapidly and commercially, as this approach is based on the pursuit of erotic content, gossip and kitsch. As the topics of tabloids are processed, sensationalism is used: relevant contents, giving way to bizarre scandalous, or tabu subjects peek into people's privacy. The consequences are reflected in shaping the reader's view of world, entering virtual reality. Moving from a strictly populist media towards a completely different media, tabloid contents manipulate consciousness and create dependence. Since they have low professional level of journalistic processing, tabloid journalism unfavourably reflects on the promotion of genuine values