News
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 …
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 …
HATE SPEECH IN SERBIAN AND BRITISH SPORT
Although miles apart, Serbia and the UK share a regrettable similarity: hate speech in sports. The slogans that are shouted at football matches are always directed against minority groups. In Serbia, the most common targets are members of the LGBTQ + community, Bosniaks, Albanians and the Roma community. The UK, on the other hand, has …
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 …
SERBIA’S GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE SCANDALS AND THE MEDIA’S RESPONSIBILITY
When Marija Lukic and Milena Radulovic decided to talk about sexual harassment, they opened the Pandora’s Box in Serbia. Cases started flooding the media about systematic sexual harassment and abuse as well as verbal abuse in schools, state run hospitals, state institutions, high ranked politicians. Marija Lukic who was the secretary of Milutin Jelicic – mayor of 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 …