Vol. 1 No. 1 (2026): Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture: Special Issue

This Special Issue of Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture is result of implementation of a project „Combatting anti-EU discourses and misinformation in North Macedonia and Serbia “ funded by the  International Visegrad fund, This project builds on a previous IVF supported project, titled “Alliances for EU.” One of the major takeaways from the previous project is: the main issue to be tackled to help “unfreeze” the negotiations is the misinformation about the EU negotiating framework, rising pro-Russian narratives painting the EU as undemocratic. The project we are proposing now is focusing on a relatively recent phenomenon, namely the virtual indistinguishability between pro-EU and anti-EU actors. In North Macedonia, the traditional pro-EU civil society actors have suddenly turned into “disappointed Europeans,” who reject the Framework consistently dubbing it the “French Proposal,” interpreting it as undemocratic pro-Bulgarian trap set by the EU, appeals to abandon EU accession have been overwhelming in the public, launched by the political left and right. The discourse of disillusionment with the EU and the impossibility to distinguish between pro-EU and anti-EU actors is something that marks Serbia as well: the actors differ in relation to the question of authoritarianism and open pro-Russian positions(those opposing Aleksandar Vucic), but there is a wide consensus about a disillusionment with the EU. Thus, we are not facing simple misinformation or disinformation that can be tackled by fact-checking only, but by revealing narrative building by actors clearly identified in a recent study commissioned by the German Bundestag (ISD, Mediaweb: Dec. 2024) leading to a new social consensus.

• Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje
• Authors: Jelisaveta Blagojević, Irena Cvetković, Spasimir Domaradzki, Christina Eva Griessler,

Katarina Kolozova, Juraj Marušiak, Michal Vit

• Language: English
• Publication Date: 2026
• Page Count: 110

CONTENTS

Jelisaveta Blagojević and Irena Cvetković - Cycling to Brussels: Democratic Subjectivity Between Situationship and Political Form

Spasimir Domaradzki - Internal Mobilization and European Integration. Polish Lessons and Macedonian Experience

Christina Eva Griessler - Illiberal loyalists: Viktor Orbán’s regional clientelistic networks in the Western Balkans

Katarina Kolozova - Misinformation Through Selective Information Geared Toward Anti-EU Narrative Building

Juraj Marušiak - Foreign policy – a new field of populist politics. Case study of the “Eastern policy” of Slovakia after the 2023 national elections

Michal Vit - Shaping the narrative of (dis)information, a view from the Czech Republic