The findings arrive at a particular moment in Montenegro’s political life. The country is the most advanced candidate in the EU enlargement process, twenty years after an independence referendum whose outcome remains settled in law yet still contested in everyday political culture. Questions of nationhood, language and church continue to shape public debate, and accession itself presupposes a public sphere in which such disputes can be argued without sliding into accusations of betrayal.

Three themes run through the sample. The first is a substantial body of content that commemorates and glorifies individuals convicted of war crimes from the 1990s, delivered through funeral footage, tribute songs and archival imagery rather than explicit argument. The second concerns Montenegro’s own statehood, as content denies or ridicules a distinct Montenegrin identity, recasts independence as betrayal and revives historical labels for internal enemies. The third is a substantial strand on gender and sexuality, in which more than a fifth of all posts target women, feminists or LGBTIQ persons in the name of a “natural order.” Across all three, the material rarely presents itself as an argument that could be answered: it works through memory, humour and belonging rather than through claims that invite rebuttal.

The two focus groups recognised manipulation readily but responded to it in markedly different ways. Participants working in civil society organisations weighed each video against the limits of free expression, drew a clear line at explicit threats, and could name concrete channels for reporting hate speech to the police or state institutions. Participants from the general youth population were no less critical of individual claims, yet knew of no protective channel beyond the platform’s own reporting button, and described nationalist content as background noise they had grown numb to. Both groups tended to scroll past rather than report.

For Montenegro’s European path, these findings pointless to a need for new restrictions than to consistent enforcement of the rules already in place, and to building the procedural knowledge and media literacy that young people currently acquire only if they happen to work in civil society. A public sphere in which identity disputes are conducted without recourse to betrayal, and in which existing protections are known and used, is not incidental to accession; it is among the conditions the process itself depends on.

Članak The Digital Echo of Old Divisions: Youth and Radicalising Narratives in Montenegro se pojavljuje prvo na European Policy Centre.

The research took place in a tense political season. The observation period ran into the campaign for the general elections of 4 October 2026, which unfolded amid open disputes over the constitutional order and the powers of the entities, and it included Mladić’s death, the wartime Bosnian Serb commander convicted of genocide. Three decades after Dayton, the country holds EU candidate status, yet the first intergovernmental conference that would formally launch accession negotiations has still not taken place.

Three themes run through the sample. The first and by far the largest is the war of 1992–1995, which TikTok content keeps reopening through competing accounts of who attacked, who defended and who suffered, ranging from commemoration to the denial of the Srebrenica genocide and the celebration of convicted commanders. The second is the state itself, as posts promote secession, a third entity or unification with a neighbouring country, and recast domestic political rivals as threats to the community. The third is religion, used to mark ethnic boundaries and, in its sharpest form, to equate a whole faith with violence. Across all three, the content rarely invents new material. Its typical move is to take existing footage, from wartime archives to television interviews, and give it a new meaning through a caption or bacground music.

Both groups recognised selective editing, missing context and attempts to provoke, and both drew a clear line between remembering a crime and using that memory to mobilise the next generation. The participants from civil society organisations analysed how each video had been assembled, while the university students in the second group engaged more with whether they found the message convincing. Neither group saw itself as the main audience at risk; both located that risk among younger viewers who meet these stories without the background needed to question them.

For Bosnia and Herzegovina, the findings suggest that the digital space reproduces divisions already embedded in politics, schooling and family memory, and that it does so faster and with less context than any other channel. Responses aimed only at removing content will therefore reach a small part of the problem. What is needed is a shared, fact-based approach to the history of the 1990s in education, together with media literacy that teaches young people to ask where a piece of footage came from and what was left out. Both belong at the centre of the societal transformation that EU accession requires, since a state whose citizens cannot agree on the facts of the recent past will find it hard to build the institutional consensus that membership presupposes.

Članak A War They Did Not Live Through: Young People and Wartime Narratives on TikTok in Bosnia and Herzegovina se pojavljuje prvo na European Policy Centre.

The central finding is that the antagonism in the Serbian sample is directed inward rather than outward. Authoritarian and anti-democratic narratives form the largest category (43.1%), narrowly ahead of ethno-nationalist and identitarian content (38.6%); political opponents framed as “traitors” are the most common target, ahead of ethnic groups. Ethno-nationalist material is less frequent, but it is not lesser in consequence, since a larger share of it sits at the radicalising or mobilising end of the continuum. On the surface, moreover, little of this content appears overtly propagandistic. Radicalising ideas are conveyed through humour, lifestyle advice, calm “explanatory” videos, television and podcast clips, and short montages built around music and archival footage, formats designed to entertain or inform, not to provoke. The underlying intention, however, is often precisely to make hierarchy, hostility or distrust look ordinary: something to laugh at, something to admire, or simply something “everyone knows”. The Serbian digital landscape captured here is therefore shaped by two overlapping fault lines: a present-day struggle over who counts as a legitimate political actor and an older one over war, nationhood and historical memory, delivered in forms that rarely announce themselves as political at all.

It is this ordinariness, more than any single extreme post, that makes the Serbian sample difficult to police through conventional content moderation, and it is also what the two focus groups found hardest to see consistently. Participants active in civil society organisations tended to decode framing, aesthetics and manipulation almost on sight, while participants from the general youth population more often engaged with the surface topic and treated the content as harmless, silly, or relevant only to “other” people, usually older or less educated audiences. Neither group is simply resilient or simply vulnerable; the difference lies in what each was trained, by circumstance or exposure, to notice. It is this gap, and not a lack of scepticism as such, that media literacy programmes will need to close.

The findings of this report speak directly to Serbia’s European path. Legitimate opposition, independent media and a functioning space for public disagreement are among the political conditions the process is designed to build and protect. A digital environment in which everyday disagreement is routinely recast as betrayal works against exactly that objective, regardless of who currently benefits from it politically. For policymakers and practitioners working on Serbia’s EU path, this report’s findings suggest that resilience to digital radicalisation deserves the same sustained attention as the rule-of-law reforms it is meant to accompany.

Članak Radicalising the Everyday: Digital Narratives and Youth Perceptions on TikTok in Serbia se pojavljuje prvo na European Policy Centre.

Following the oath of Vice President Vance and President Trump, a thirty-minute speech ensued, the longest in modern U.S. history. At the beginning of his address, after the introductory remarks, Trump declared that “the golden age of America begins right now.” The main message of the speech—putting America first—aligns with Trump’s earlier campaign. This idea implies not only economic but also political sovereignty, further emphasized by criticizing the government for neglecting issues at the southern border and the interests of its citizens. Such rhetoric has a strong populist tone, relying on the polarization between the “common people” and the “inefficient establishment.” Trump’s stance toward the government and establishment, which he accuses of a crisis of trust and poor management, continues to underscore his image as an outsider in the political system, even though he has not been one for years. This is also an attempt to shift responsibility for social problems onto previous administrations, thereby solidifying the narrative of the need for change through his administration. Interestingly, despite his critical tone toward the establishment, Trump spoke of a peaceful transition of power and called January 20 “Liberation Day.” Additionally, he praised last year’s election process and everything that followed leading up to the inauguration. In doing so, he conveys a message of unity, using emotional and religious rhetoric (“we will not forget our God”) to connect with various social groups. However, the contradiction between calls for unity and polarizing content raises the question of how inclusive that message truly is.

Donald Trump took the oath of office at the 60th presidential inauguration in the US Capitol’s Rotunda in Washington. (AP pic)
Trump announced a series of executive orders to demonstrate decisiveness and swift action. Declaring a state of emergency at the southern border and his firm stance on illegal immigration reflects his “America First” policy and focus on national security. While such measures appeal to a segment of the electorate, they also spark controversy due to potential human rights violations. Plans to eliminate the “Green New Deal” and subsidies for electric vehicles highlight his desire to prioritize traditional industries, such as automotive. At the same time, his proposals to reform the trade system through tariffs and duties reflect strong economic protectionism. Establishing the External Revenue Service to collect all tariffs, duties, and revenues can be seen as an attempt to institutionalize these policies and signal increased state intervention in the economy.

One of the most controversial parts of the speech was his stance on “social engineering of race and gender.” Announcing the abolition of policies recognizing multiple genders and insisting on the existence of only two genders sparked societal polarization. “From today, it will now be the official policy of the U.S. government that there are only two genders, male and female,” Trump concluded. Such positions resonate strongly with the conservative segment of the population but raise questions about minority rights and discrimination.

The speech continued in the same tone, addressing highly topical and controversial issues from the past weeks. Renaming locations, such as changing the Gulf of Mexico to the American Gulf and restoring the name William McKinley to Mount Denali, points to symbolic policies to restore American identity. His statements about the Panama Canal and criticism of Chinese influence further highlight his dissatisfaction with the global power distribution, while rhetoric about “reclaiming the canal” evokes nostalgia for the U.S.’s past geopolitical influence. Beyond Panama, Trump’s speech ventured outside the realm of our planet Earth, briefly announcing the plan to send the first humans to Mars.

Trump’s speech concluded with a call for national pride and optimism, emphasizing the courage and dreams of the American people. Trump declared that “our golden age has just begun.” However, behind this optimism potentially lies polarizing rhetoric and policies that will cause deep divisions within the country and in international relations. His inaugural message combined a vision of renewed sovereignty with a clear message of a conservative counter-revolution that, for now at least, enjoys widespread support and roots in the public.

Članak Trump 2.0: Toward a Conservative Counter-Revolution se pojavljuje prvo na European Policy Centre.