Vessela Tabakova, PhD, is a leading political and media science researcher, media professor, political advisor and analyst in Bulgaria and South Eastern Europe. Tabakova lectures at the St. Kliment Ohridski Sofia University and Nov Bulgarski Universitet on political media coverage and political communications. She is the deputy editor in chief of the quarterly journal Political Studies and the author of six books, more than twenty studies and over two hundred articles in the fields of media and democracy, political science, media and politics, political communications, European media systems and environmental news reporting. As a Fulbright visiting scholar to the University of Northern Iowa’s Communications Arts Center and Department of Communications, Tabakova researched the political influence of the media and citizens. She received a NATO Individual Democratic Institutions Research Fellowships to study national security priorities and the mass media in Bulgaria. She received a scholarship to the School of Journalism in Lille, France, and a Ruskin College Research Fellowship as a visiting lecturer to Oxford. Tabakova was a senior research fellow at the Institute for Modern Social Theories, Bulgarian Academy of Science. She provided expertise to the Media in Paneuropean Perspective working group of the Council of Europe. In 1997-2000 Tabakova led a team of media experts analysing news coverage of nuclear energy in Bulgaria. She is a chairperson of the Centre for Independent Journalism – Sofia, a member of the Board of the Bulgarian Media Coalition and a member of the International Steering Group of the Regional Environmental Press Centre for South Eastern Europe. Tabakova is the former head of the Politics Department at the Standard Daily, Sofia, and a former editor and news reporter for the Narodna Mladej and Studentska Tribuna daily newspapers. Pavel Antonov is the Editor of the Green Horizon and a media project manager at the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe based in Szentendre, Hungary. Antonov is a journalist, media researcher, television and film producer. His previous research concerned how the media covers and impacts the environment, with particular focus on environmental news reporting, journalistic independence, post-communism mass media developments, electronic communication and civil society. Antonov defended with honours his master thesis, Environmental Media: State and Trends in Bulgaria, at the Journalism and Mass Communications Department of the St. Kliment Ohrdski University of Sofia. As part of his studies at the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy at Central European University, Budapest, he researched environmental journalism practices through a case study of the mass media coverage and public perceptions of the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant in Bulgaria in 1997-1998. Antonov is the author of articles, stories and reports on the state of environment in Central and Eastern Europe. He has produced documentaries on nature protection, civil society, EU accession and politics and culture in Bulgaria. Antonov is the former producer of Day of the Earth, a biweekly environmental programme of Demo Television, and former editor in chief of the Information Programmes Department at Nova Television in Bulgaria. He has worked as a political and foreign affairs news reporter, editor and presenter of information programmes. He is a founder of BlueLink.net – Bulgaria’s environmental civil society electronic network.

Home The Authors Introduction Background Methodology Technical Implementation Survey Results Conclusion Appendix 1: Questionnaire Appendix 2: Results Tables