News
Troll of the year 2025: Dragan J. Vučićević
The Balkan Troll of the Month is selected monthly based on incidents monitored and gathered across the six Western Balkan countries. In December, RDN combined votes from the Western Balkan countries with input from a public voting process to guide the selection of the Troll of the year. In the first round, media monitors from all six …
RTRS on the old propaganda track: Fighting manipulation is not censorship
RTRS has once again confirmed that there are no limits to the violation of professional and ethical standards in its reporting. The news programme of Radio Television of Republika Srpska (RTRS), the public broadcaster of that Bosnia and Herzegovina entity, has for the umpteenth time demonstrated that there are no boundaries when it comes to …
Troll of the Month: Dario Vraneš – President of the Municipality of Pljevlja
The Balkan Troll of the Month is an individual, a group of individuals or a media outlet that spreads hate based on gender, ethnicity, religion, or other diversity categories. The Balkan Troll is selected based on hate speech incidents identified across the Western Balkan region.da On December 6, 2025, Milka Tadić Mijović, an investigative journalist …
Monthly Highlights November: Hate speech, Threats and Sensationalism
During November, the RDN monitoring team identified a range of hateful narratives and discourse driven by hateful and harmful political speech, hate speech against journalists and sensationalistic reporting. Hateful and harmful speech in Albanian parliament During the parliamentary session debating the newly adopted Gender Equality Law, opposition leader Sali Berisha made a series of homophobic …
The daughter belongs to someone else’s family
Stories behind the disparity in property ownership at the expense of women Inheritance of property by women in North Macedonia is so rare that over time it has become a customary practice that is seldom questioned. Like many traditions, this one too is rooted in inequality, upheld only by our socially constrained perceptions of what …
From Belgrade to Prishtina: Women Who Refused to Be Silent
On August 14, 2025, after one of many student protests in Belgrade, a group of students was attacked by the police while heading home and taken to a nearby garage. Among them was Nikolina Sinđelić, a survivor of police brutality. “As we were walking down Nemanjina Street, we encountered members of the JZO (Unit for …
Troll of the Month: TV Klan Kosova
The Balkan Troll of the Month is an individual, a group of individuals or a media outlet that spreads hate based on gender, ethnicity, religion, or other diversity categories. The Balkan Troll is selected based on hate speech incidents identified across the Western Balkan region. On the evening of November 5, 25-year-old Daorsa Spahija from …
The State(s), the Church(es), and the Nationalism
In the Western Balkans, the line between political power and religious authority is increasingly blurred. From Belgrade to Ppogorica to Skopje, churches do more than tend to faith. Religious leaders preserve historical narratives, shape national identity, and legitimise state power. Whether by glorifying convicted war criminals or framing geopolitical struggles as spiritual battles, religious leaders …
THE “UNALTERED” LITERATURE OF KOSOVAR SCHOOLS
LITERATURE IN SCHOOLS REPRODUCES DEROGATORY AND RACIST LANGUAGE WITHOUT CRITICAL EXAMINATION. The teacher reads aloud: “I thought I had come to the door of the magjyp” (a derogatory term for the Egyptian, Roma, and Ashkali communities), while the class listens in silence. Somewhere in the penultimate row, an Ashkali boy lowers his gaze. After this …