When music raises ethnic tensions: Goran Bregović in Korçë’s Beer Fest

Former Yugoslav rock star, Goran Bregović, announced a concert at a beer festival in Albania. This caused tensions for weeks in Kosovo and Albania as he is seen as a supporter of Slobodan Milosevic’s regime, and a motivator of massacres during the 1999 Kosovo war. The debates continued among Albanians and the police arrested 8 …

BALKAN TROLL OF THE MONTH: Stav.ba

The Balkan Troll of the Month is an individual, a group of individuals or a media outlet that spreads hate on the internet based on gender, ethnicity, religion, or other diversity categories. The Balkan Troll is selected based on hate speech incidents identified across the Western Balkans region. Our August Troll of the Month is …

Nejra Latić Hulusić – Women, Activism and the Media

Nejra Latić Hulusić, a director and activist from Bosnia and Hetzegovina (BiH) recently posted on social media that she had been ordered to stop swimming at the Panonika beach in Tuzla because she was wearing a burkini -a full-body swimsuit. This is not the first time for women who wear the hijab and swim in …

HATE SPEECH IN THE WESTERN BALKANS: July Monthly Highlights

Throughout the month of July, the RDN monitoring team has detected a range of hateful narratives and discourse. As we enter the tourist holiday season, there has been a rise in hateful narratives directed towards various ethnic groups including high levels of ethnic discrimination and racism across all six Western Balkan states. Tourism and the …

BOSNIA’S NEW PORTALS ARE A FERTILE GROUND FOR HATE SPEECH AND SEXISM

In the countries of the Balkans, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, new media,  most often portals, which provide no contact information or any information on the ownership or editorial structure on their pages are “emerging” every day. Clearly, their only mission is to make money, and for that they need clicks. That is why they abound …

BALKAN TROLL OF THE MONTH: T7 TV Channel

The Balkan Troll of the Month is an individual, a group of individuals or a media outlet that spreads hate on the internet based on gender, ethnicity, religion, or other diversity categories. The Balkan Troll is selected based on hate speech incidents identified across the Western Balkans region. Our July Troll of the Month is …

HATE SPEECH IN THE WESTERN BALKANS: Monthly Monitoring Highlights

Throughout the month of June, the RDN monitoring team has detected a range of hateful narratives and discourse. As June was Pride Month, homophobia continued to be present within traditional and social media alongside a large range of hate speech including sexist narratives and ethnic discrimination across all six Western Balkan countries. Ethnic Discrimination between …

BALKAN TROLL OF THE MONTH: TV Happy

The Balkan Troll of the Month is an individual, a group of individuals or a media outlet that spreads hate on the internet based on gender, ethnicity, religion, or other diversity categories. The Balkan Troll is selected based on hate speech incidents identified across the Western Balkans region. Our June Troll of the Month was …

HOMOPHOBIA IN THE WESTERN BALKANS: Monthly Monitoring Highlight

Throughout May, the RDN monitoring team has detected a range of hateful narratives. Due to June being the month that several events take place globally to recognise the impact of the LGBTQ+ community we will have a country spotlight that focuses on homophobia. During our monitoring activities we have also encountered incidents relating to hate …