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BATTLE OVER HEADLINES: The Kosovar and Serbian media are on different planets

Another “war” between Kosovo and Serbia has ended. This one was over license plates and brought the north of Kosovo back into the spotlight beyond Prishtina and Belgrade. The scenario of this “war” was similar to others in the north. Kosovo used its most serious police force, the Kosovo Police Special Unit, while Kosovo Serbs again …

HATE SPEECH IN THE WESTERN BALKANS: September Monthly Highlights

Throughout the month of September, the RDN monitoring team has detected a range of hateful narratives and discourse. During this month there has been a rise in hate speech including ethnic discrimination and xenophobia towards various ethnic communities as well as instances of homophobia and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric across all six Western Balkan states. Ethnic discrimination …

TROLL OF THE MONTH: TV PINK

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 September Troll of the Month is …

MONTENEGRO ETHNIC DIVISIONS MIRRORED IN DIVISIVE MEDIA DISCOURSES

Hearing my two Montenegrin colleagues recently describe what they felt on September 5th – one describing mostly peaceful protest with cooperative police in Cetinje and the other one a terrifying panic over her impression that there is a violent chaos taking place as following the media and social networks from home – to me sounded …

REM DA REAGUJE NA NEETIČKO IZVEŠTAVANJE I SEKUNDARNU VIKTIMIZACIJU

Beograd, 17.9.2021 Nakon što je Miroslav Aleksić, koji je osumnjičen za silovanje i nedozvoljene polne radnje, pušten u kućni pritvor, nekadašnji fudbaler Dušan Savić gostovao je na televiziji Pink. Savić je u jutarnjem programu govorio kako je optužnica „iskonstruisana”, „osmišljena” i kako predstavlja napad na Srbiju. U emisiji su korišćeni razni argumenti kako bi se …

HATE SPEECH IN THE WESTERN BALKANS: August Monthly Highlights

Throughout the month of August, the RDN monitoring team has detected a range of hateful narratives and discourse. During this month there has been a rise in hateful narratives and hate speech towards various ethnic groups including ethnic discrimination and sexism across all six Western Balkan states. Ethnic discrimination in three Western Balkan states The …

HATE SPEECH IS NOT AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED FREE SPEECH

Freedom of opinion without polite communication can very often turn into hate speech. This happens too often in Serbia today, especially in the space of electronic media, which has the greatest influence on majority public opinion. It is through electronic media that hate speech reaches particularly perfidious forms and is often mistakenly presented as freedom …

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 …