This paper examines the instability of media coverage in hybrid regimes, using Serbia’s 2024/25 protest wave as a case study. It argues that existing theoretical frameworks of media systems - derived from principles of democratic transparency on the one end and authoritarian control on the other - fail to capture the dynamics of media systems that contain both independent and captured outlets operating within the same informational space. The paper conceptualizes hybrid media systems as volatile and adaptive environments whose instability is structural rather than exceptional.

The study combines computational and qualitative content analyses to trace how two of Serbia’s most watched and trusted broadcasters - a government-controlled public outlet (RTS) and an independent international channel (N1) - navigate crisis and visibility. Preliminary findings point to recurrent and volatile shifts between censorship, substitution, and selective reframing - patterns that appear less coordinated and more situational than those typically observed in autocracies. Overall, the findings seem to suggest that volatility itself may constitute the defining communicative logic of hybrid regimes, enabling them to maintain legitimacy through continuous recalibration rather than consistent control.