Paper short abstract:

We are going to use YouTube clips about the life of the former Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito, the development of Yugoslavia under his rule as well as snippets from annual secular pilgrimages and festivals held in Tito's home village Kumrovec. Some of the video clips parodise the political discourse and "former comrades".

Paper long abstract:

According to Istvan Povedak (2009), historical heroes and contemporary celebrities are in close relation. Their formation was generated by similar circumstances but their cult and its peculiarities accommodate to the parameters of a given historical period. Which time period and heroes does the YouTube Titoana reflect?

We are going to use YouTube clips to analyse myths and antimyths of Tito in a popular visual media environment. YouTube is a specific political forum and a part of participatory culture (Burgess 2009, Jenkins 2008, Vonderau, Snickars 2008). Among others YouTube contains multivoiced video clips about the life of the former Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito, the development of Yugoslavia under his rule as well as snippets from annual secular pilgrimages and festivals held in Tito's home village Kumrovec. Additionally there are large corpuses of commentaries and messages of YouTube users, an additional part and verbalisation of visual narratives.

We are analyzing the YouTube Tito archives using the discourse of a star politician and former Yugoslavian history, viewed via the prism of the president's biography and visual narratives. Important keywords in video clips include partisan war, democracy, songs and music, youth, unified symbolics, but also the discourse of an enlightened leader with of simple origins (cf Belaj). Some of the video clips parodise the political discourse and "former comrades". Besides nostalgia, fixing history and political narratives, humour plays a major part.