Project goals
The underlying idea of the “Uncertain Past: Timeline 1991-2015” project was to contribute to the increase in the quality of investigative journalism and credibility of the media in Serbia through the creation of a new national and local digital multimedia archive. It is also the intention of Timeline to increase media and digital literacy, which would enable the citizens to analyze and assess media messages and identify the influence of the media on democratic processes. This project is being implemented by Ebart, together with its partners, the NIN weekly and the “Vladislav Petković Dis” City Library from Čačak, and is financed by the European Union. The author of the project is the founder of Ebart, Velimir Ćurgus Kazimir.
The Timeline portal is based on different events that were significant for the 1991-2015period. Every event can be linked to one or multiple timelines and contains a brief description in the form of news and at least two different or opposed relevant sources, originating from print media, radio or television. Certain events additionally include caricatures or photographs.
Activities
In the course of the past two years, since the implementation of Timeline started, the Ebart research team, which consists of media experts, sociologists and historians, has reviewed more than 250,000 newspaper pages, more than 600 hours of radio program and around 1,000 hours of television programme. The outcome of this effort is more than 2,000 select events and 10,000 entered sources for the 1991-2000 period. In the next year and a half, the Timeline production process will continue with the selection of the most important events that took place between 2001 and 2015, reconstructing the media content created during the course of these 25 years. At the end of this process, in 2021, Timeline will cover at least 5,000 events and more than 20,000 sources.
In addition to the national Timeline, a local Timeline has also been created, covering events significant for the city of Čačak, which was produced by the Vladislav Petković Dis City Library from Čačak. The role of the NIN weekly and the Ringier Axel Springer Serbia company will be to support the project by publishing a feuilleton based on the material collected in the course of the project.
Timeline is available at tajmlajn.net