Coca-cola, Marlboro, Suzuki: Turbofolk music as a tool of political propaganda during the 1990s in Serbia

This paper analyzes the relationship and correlation between propaganda and the mass media on the example of turbo-folk music as the most influential cultural model in the 1990s in Serbia. The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence and spread of turbo-folk music through various propaganda techniques and through the mass media. The primary aim of the research is to understand the related propaganda and the media, while the starting hypothesis is that turbo-folk music served the political interests of the ruling elites as a distraction from the gloomy political and economic situation in which Serbia was. My intention is that turbo-folk music could be considered as the primary cultural model of that age, just as much as the culture of escapism.