This study investigates how nationalistic ideologies were presented to the media by the guerilla movement known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The KLA has an interesting history as a social movement. As an organization in the heart of an area riddled by war and conquest, the KLA was created in response to Albanian oppression by Serbian forces in the early 1990s. A strong history of Albanian nationalism was the founding ideology of the KLA; and it was this ideology that mobilized large public support and a steady influx of recruits. At the end of the 1990s, the KLA became increasingly successful at attracting international attention for their cause. Through these efforts, the KLA had to behave in such a way so as to ensure continued support for foreign bodies. By downplaying their Albanian nationalistic ideologies, among other tactics, the KLA succeeded in securing international intervention in Kosovo. The central question examined in this research is if and how nationalistic values presented by members of the KLA changed over time (from the movement's media debut to its fractionation into various other movements). Two types of nationalistic values were studied: civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism. A content analysis of newspaper interviews from 1997 to 2003 with members from the KLA was conducted to determine the frequency of nationalistic value expression. Word frequencies of each value were analyzed as proportions, and graphically analyzed to determine the occurrence and direction of change in the ethnic and civic national values presented to the media by KLA members.
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