The historical, religious, and cultural affinity between Russia and Serbia, as well as the political and economic dependence of Serbia on Russia, encouraged the authors to investigate how the public media service of Serbia (RTS) reports on Russia. By applying quantitative-qualitative content analysis, journalistic texts published on the RTS website in the «World» and «Region» sections during February and March 2020 were analyzed. During the analysis, a special code sheet was used and a statistical method was used to process the results. The research questions were: to what extent is Russia reported on the RTS website in relation to other countries, what is the form of texts, what topics are covered most frequently, in what context are articles written about Russia and which individuals are covered most often. The article highlights certain patterns and prevailing criteria that the Serbian public media platform relies on in selecting and creating news about Russia. The importance of covering topics that are happening in or around Russia is especially evident during times of crisis such as the outbreak of COVID-19 in Serbia. As a result of the study, the authors come to the conclusion that Russia occupies an important place in the Serbian public discourse, as well as in the news of the Serbian public media. The research is limited to a fairly short period of time and could be a starting point for a broader and deeper study on this topic.
Serbia; Russia; representation in the media; Serbian radio television portal; broadcasting about abroad; the meaning of news.