Category: News and Events

Western Balkan Journalists Trained in Data Analysis and Data Visualization

Journalists from six Balkans countries were given training in vital modern newsroom techniques by BIRN.

A group of 38 journalists from six countries across the Balkans have been trained in data analysis and visualisation by BIRN.

Between September 23-30, the journalists, from Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, took part in three online training sessions.

Run by BIRN as part of the Western Balkans Media for Change project, the training focused on sessions to enhance journalists skills in data analysis and visualisation – key skills required in today’s evolving newsrooms.

Training sessions on data analysis were led by Besar Likmeta, editor-in-chief of BIRN Albania, in the Albanian language, and by Milica Stojanovic, an investigative journalist with Balkan Insight, in Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian.

These sessions focused on showcasing ways to analyse crowdsourced data collected via BIRN’s Engaged Citizens Reporting (ECR) tool using spreadsheets. The ECR tool, developed by BIRN through the Media for All project, allows citizens to contribute with their testimonies, forming a valuable data source for journalistic stories.

Additionally, Azem Kurtic, also an investigative journalist with Balkan Insight, provided insights into data visualisation techniques. Kurtic introduced participants to various data visualisation tools, including Knight Lab, Flourish, and Datawrapper, which help enhance storytelling through interactive and visually engaging elements.

This training complements a previous session held in June by Jonathan Stoneman, a data journalist and trainer with extensive career in BBC.

The Western Balkan Media for Change project is funded by the UK government and implemented by the British Council in partnership with BIRN, the Thomson Foundation, and INTRAC. The project supports the work of media outlets and individual journalists across the Western Balkans.

Journalists Awarded For Top Investigative Journalism in Montenegro

Six journalists were handed awards at the EU Investigative Journalism Awards on September 30th.

Stories on water pollution, banned pesticides and the mass shooting in Cetinje were some of the subjects for which six journalists have received awards for outstanding investigative journalism in Montenegro.

Tatjana Asanin, Nikola Milosavic Aleksic, Svetlana Djokic, Milica Babic, Djurdja Radulovic and Andrea Perisic were announced as winners at the 2024 annual EU Investigative Journalism Awards at Europe House in Podgorica on September 30th.

First prize was shared between Tatjana Asanin and Nikola Milosavic Aleksic from TV Vijesti for their series about sewage, “In Murky Waters, and Svetlana & Milica from TV E for their series, “Massacre of Responsibilities’, which revealed new details about the Cetinje massacre in which 10 people were killed.

The second prize went to Djurdja Radulovic from Balkan Insight for the investigation titled “Nobody Checks: Bying Banned Pesticides in Montenegro,” a compelling piece that reveals the dangerous consequences of unregulated sales of banned pesticides in Montenegro, posing serious risks to health and the environment. The story has been developed as part of the BIRN’s Summer School.

The third prize was awarded to Andrea Perisic from the Center for Investigative Journalism for her powerful exposé, “Smuggling of Montenegro archaeological treasures: They blow up, sell and destroy heritage without punishment”.

The jury consisted of Branko Cecen, an experienced journalist who led the Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia (CINS) to international acclaim; Olivera Nikolic who now heads the Montenegro Media Institute; and Mileva Malesic a founder of the Women’s Forum Prijepolje and the TV Forum. More about the jury members can be found here.

European Union ambassador to Montenegro, Mr. Johann Sattler, handed out the awards certificates.

BIRN Kosovo Holds Terrorism and Extremism Workshop

Local groups were informed by experts and officials about how Kosovo is monitoring the threat from terrorism and extremist violence.

BIRN Kosovo held a workshop for local groups on how to effectively monitor terrorism and violent extremism.

The workshop, in Prishtina on September 30, was attended by local NGOs and representatives of local civil society organisations (CSOs).

It began with participants from CSOs giving an overview of their work and interest in the field of preventing and countering violent extremism. There was a short presentation on the current situation regarding terrorism and extremism in Kosovo. This was followed by an explanation of the National Strategy for Preventing and Countering Terrorism, with a focus on developing monitoring and research projects on this topic.

During the workshop, Kreshnik Gashi, Managing Editor of Kallxo.com, an online platform which exposes corruption, discussed how the national strategy, which runs from 2023 to 2028, is being implemented at a local level.

Milot Sfishta, from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, provided an overview of how and where terrorism and extremism were impacting Kosovo, and how the government could collaborate with CSOs in addressing these issues.

The workshop was part of the Resilient Community Programme funded by the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF). 

Overmatter 

focused on the development of monitoring and research projects in the fields of terrorism and extremism. A total of 12 participants took part in the one-day, focused workshop focused on the field of preventing and countering violent extremism, out of which 4 were women.
During the workshop, the attendees were engaged and expressed their opinions that such workshops are very important for them as they continue working in the civil society sector in the local level.

Lala Meredith-Vula Opens the “A Journey With My Father” Exhibition at Prishtina Hamam

On the first day of October, Reporting House welcomed the British-Albanian artist, Lala Meredith Vula, as she opened her exhibit “A Journey with My Father”, featuring selected works from her “Bathers” series.

The opening event was held at the historic Hamam of Prishtina and included a discussion with the artists on her photography, which captures the social life from different regions of Kosovo during the 1980s and 1990s.

The artist explained to the audience that her series of photography “Bathers” is a very personal series, as it reflects her reconnection with her father from whom she was separated when she was 4 years old.

“This series of photographs is very poignant for me because it was a journey I undertook with my father and he was sharing his love of architecture with me in the 1980s and 90s. What I saw was his enthusiasm and joy in architecture. What I experienced are these photographs”, said Meredith Vula.

Her father worked in Kosovo’s Institution for Protection of Monuments, specializing in preserving old hammams. As he introduced her to this world, Vula began documenting the disuse of the Prishtina Hamam, later photographing bathers at a functioning Hamam near the Albanian-Macedonian border and photographed those bathers who are returned to a hamam today, as they experienced it then, four decades ago.

In “Bathers,” Vula challenges traditional artistic representations of women bathing, offering a modern, spontaneous perspective.

“In my research, I stumbled into a hidden dream world of calm and purity, a safe place of mysterious beauty. These photographs are dedicated to the hope and beauty which I found amongst these women” said Vula.

This event gathered artists, civil society representatives, architects, and media.

Lala Meredith Vula’s exhibition will be open at Prishtinas Hamma, during October, from Monday to Saturday.

E-Government in the Balkans Still a Work in Progress: BIRN Report

A new BIRN report says a lack of funds and political will means that e-government services and open data provision in the Balkans remain very limited.

E-government is becoming the norm around the world, but people in the Balkans are not benefitting in full because of a lack of political will in some cases and a shortfall in institutional capacity in general, a new report on open data and digitalisation published by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network shows.

The idea of ‘electronic government’, or e-government, is to eradicate queues, reduce paperwork and provide users with quicker, more convenient access to public services, from health to taxation and schooling.

In the Balkans, however, the roll-out has only been partial and faces a range of challenges, according to BIRN’s report, Open Data and Digitalisation in the Western Balkans: The State of Play,

“There remains a significant gap in their capacity to fully leverage digitalization across various dimensions, including skills development, system integration, cybersecurity, and user-centric solutions,” said an Albanian digital security expert.

Limited services

BIRN’s report highlights how Balkan countries are performing badly in e-government development; the online offering of public services remains limited.

In 2022, Serbia ranked 40th on the UN’s E-Government Development Index, ahead of Albania, Montenegro and North Macedonia in 63rd, 71st and 80th place respectively. Bosnia and Herzegovina came in at 96. Kosovo was not listed.

The governments of all six Western Balkan countries covered by the BIRN report have specialised e-government websites and all e-government portals analysed by BIRN are active and up to date; new services are created on a regular basis.

Serbia launched ‘eUprava’ in 2010. A decade later, the portal was updated with a new design and functionality adapted for mobile and tablet devices. The address remained the same – euprava.gov.rs.

Serbia offers 186 unique e-government services, enabling users to access documents, certificates and services concerning education, family, healthcare, employment and urban planning.

Montenegro’s e-government system claims to provide over 500 services under the jurisdiction of 50 public institutions, but 349 of these are instructions on how to use government services.

North Macedonia’s offers services from 170 public institutions, out of a total of roughly 1,300.

Bosnia and Herzegovina has three separate e-government portals – one for each entity and a third for the autonomous district of Brcko. But there is no information on how many services these offer.

The e-Albania portal offers 1,237 online services and boasts a total of almost 3.2 million registered users. The portal, which is managed by the National Agency for Information Society, AKSHI, is accessible in web, iOS and Android mobile app versions, with more than 415,000 users also registered on the mobile app.

Kosovo’s portal, e-Kosova, offers more than 30 e-government services and also makes possible online payments.

Cybersecurity concerns

With increasing digitalisation comes greater scrutiny of digital security given the amount of sensitive, personal data carried on such portals.

“E-Kosova is managed by a private company which does not have a security clearance,” a civil society digital expert told BIRN. “There are no certified security officials because we have no laws that classify information, classify who got access, etc… the security behind e-Kosova has been the main problem.”

Montenegro has already paid dearly for lax security, after its e-government portal was one of the targets of a major ransomware attack in 2022. Services have not yet fully recovered.

In a report published in June, BIRN urged Montenegro to upgrade its cyber security institutions to tackle potential threats, as well as increase public awareness about private data protection, digital rights and online security.

The same year, Albanian government systems, albeit not on the e-Albania platform itself, were hit in July and September by large-scale cyber-attacks, which led to the temporary disruption of most online public services.

An FBI-aided investigation pointed the finger of blame at Iranian hackers, saying they had accessed the Albanian system 14 months earlier.

Lack of financial resources

Digitalisation and the accompanying security requirements do not come cheap. Balkan countries are particularly limited in how much they can invest.

“State budgets for digital transformation are often limited and insufficient to achieve comprehensive progress,” a representative of the institution in charge of e-government services in Bosnia and Herzegovina told BIRN. “Budgetary allocation priorities are not always focused on digitalisation, resulting in a lack of funds for digital transformation projects.”

EU and international actors such as the UNDP and German GIZ provide some financial support for e-government projects but one expert told BIRN that these are project-based and not long-term solutions.

Additional funds are required to promote e-government services once they are developed.

A 2023 survey by NALED in Serbia found that 61 per cent of Serbian citizens lack proper information on the eUprava portal and how it works.

Read the full report here.

BIRN Albania Holds Training on Project Management

The Balkan Investigative Reporting in Albania held a training on September 24 on project management for representatives of civil society organizations, grantees of the EU-funded project: “Strengthening Media Freedom, Professionalism and Journalists’ Safety in Albania”.

The project was launched in January 2024 and is being implemented by BIRN Albania in partnership with the Science for Innovation Development Centre, SCiDEV, and Qendra Faktoje.

The goal of this project is to strengthen the resilience of local media and journalists to provide independent and fact-based information in order to foster people’s understanding and inform participation in public debate.

In the framework of this project, BIRN Albania has provided grants to three organisations/ local media.

The training session focused on the main aspects of the project’s management, such as the monitoring and evaluation process, record keeping, narrative and financial reporting procedures and visibility standards for the sub-grantees.

The sub-grantees will also receive training on fact-checking, provided by Faktoje, and on digital security and safety of journalists, provided by SCiDEV. Each training session will be followed by on-the-job mentoring for each of the media supported.

The training session included representatives from Community Reporters Albania, CRA, Kujri Center and the Information Network & Active Citizenship, INAC.

EU Awards for Best Investigative Journalism for 2024 in Kosovo Presented

Behar Mustafa, Kreshnik Gashi, Alberta Hashani, Dardan Hoti, Aulonë Kadriu and Dafina Halili were selected from many colleagues as 2023’s winners of awards for best investigative stories in Kosovo, for stories that exposed corruption in building premits, judicial misconduct and online and image-based sexual abuse and harassment.

The ceremony took place in Europe House in Prishtina, Kosovo on September 25.

The jury consisted of Imer Mushkolaj,a  veteran journalist, columnist and opinionist who has led the Kosovo Journalists Association (KJA) and now heads the Press Council of Kosovo; Amra Zejneli Loxha, director of RFE/RL’s Kosovo Service; and Darko Dimitrijević, Editor-in-Chief at Radio Goraždevac since 2005 and a founding member of the Kosovo Media Association (KOSMA). More about the jury members here.

First prize went to Behar Mustafa and Kreshnik Gashi from Kallxo.com for their series of investigations into corruption with building permits in Brezovica.

Second prize went to Alberta Hashani from Betimi për Drejtësi for her story revealing judicial misconduct involving a bribed prosecutor.

Third place went to two stories from the same media outlet, Kosovo 2.0. The first, by Dardan Hoti and Aulonë Kadriu, focused on the consequences of online harassment and the victims of image-based sexual abuse.

The second, by Dafina Halili, was for her investigation of sexual harassment at the University of Pristina.

Hoti and Kadriu produced their awarded story as part of their project included in the Media Innovation Europe project – Audience engaged grants. This was their third award.

The Head of the EU Office in Kosovo/EU Special Representative, Ambassador Aivo Orav, handed the awards to the winners, highlighting the key importance of journalistic work in every society.

BIRN Kosovo, KCSS, Train Students in Gjilan to Combat Russian, Chinese, and Religious Disinformation

On September 25, about 20 students of the Faculty of Law, Economics and Education in Gjilan participated in a training session on combating Russian, Chinese and religious disinformation in Kosovo.

Organised by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN Kosovo) and the Kosovar Center for Security Studies (KCSS), the training focused on equipping participants with the knowledge and skills necessary to identify and counter misleading narratives that threaten local communities.

The first session, led by Labinot Leposhtica from BIRN Kosovo, addressed the influence of Russian and Chinese disinformation on Kosovo’s media and justice systems.

Leposhtica discussed how disinformation campaigns, often orchestrated by foreign powers, aim to destabilize the region by undermining trust in institutions and spreading false narratives.

He provided examples of how these actors manipulate information, particularly regarding the justice system, and introduced mechanisms for regulation and self-regulation that can help counter these efforts.

Students learned to differentiate between disinformation, misinformation and narratives, and were given practical tools to spot and debunk false narratives spread by state-controlled foreign media.

The second session, led by Skënder Perteshi from KCSS, shifted the focus to religious disinformation. Perteshi discussed how radical religious groups in Kosovo and abroad use disinformation as a strategic tool to promote extremist ideologies.

Participants were introduced to the various narratives used by these groups to mislead vulnerable audiences as well as the strategic goals these groups aim to achieve through disinformation.

Perteshi emphasized the importance of understanding the target audiences of religious disinformation and provided strategies for building positive alternative narratives to counteract extremist messaging.

The session also covered how secularism, democracy and the rule of law are often attacked by such disinformation campaigns, and how individuals can protect themselves and their communities from being misled​.

By the end of the training, students gained a stronger understanding of the dynamics of disinformation and were better prepared to act as critical consumers of information.

Leposhtica and Perteshi emphasized that tackling disinformation requires active participation from the community, especially from young people who play a key role in shaping Kosovo’s future.

The training was held by BIRN Kosovo and KCSS within the project “Increasing public awareness on Russian, Chinese influence and religious disinformation and equipping media students and journalists with the necessary tools to identify, analyze, and combat disinformation”, supported through the Digital Activism Program by TechSoup Global.

BIRN Kosovo and KCSS Train Students to Combat Russian, Chinese and Religious Disinformation

On September 23, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN Kosovo) and the Kosovar Center for Security Studies (KCSS) held a training for students in South Mitrovica.

The training aimed to empower students with the knowledge and tools they need to identify and combat disinformation, particularly narratives originating from Russia and China, and religious ideologies.

The training tackled the complex nature of disinformation. The first session focused on foreign influence, specifically Russian and Chinese disinformation, and the second addressed religious-based misinformation that often targets vulnerable communities in Kosovo.

Visar Prebreza, from BIRN Kosovo, led the discussion on Russian and Chinese disinformation. He provided a deep dive into how foreign powers, especially Kremlin-led and Chinese state-controlled media, have disseminated misleading narratives that affect local perceptions in Kosovo.

Prebreza highlighted the challenges that Kosovo’s media face when addressing such disinformation. He walked participants through the key elements of identifying false narratives and offered real-world examples of how these tactics play out in the Kosovo media landscape.

Skënder Perteshi, from KCSS, led the second session, on how extremist religious groups use disinformation as a tool to spread radical ideologies.

In his presentation, he outlined the various strategies these groups use, including targeting specific audiences with narratives designed to undermine secularism, democracy and the rule of law in Kosovo.

He also explored the broader strategic goals of radical religious actors and how their disinformation campaigns aim to divide communities.

The session concluded with practical advice on how to build positive counter-narratives to disinformation and promote unity​.

The training allowed the students to engage directly with experts and discuss the role of media literacy in defending against disinformation.

Prebreza and Perteshi both emphasized the importance of youth involvement in creating resilient communities capable of identifying and responding to misleading information.

This training was held by BIRN Kosovo and KCSS within the project “Increasing public awareness on Russian, Chinese influence and religious disinformation and equipping media students and journalists with the necessary tools to identify, analyze, and combat disinformation”, supported through the Digital Activism Program by TechSoup Global.

BIRN Holds Regional Meeting with GIF Local Partners

Local partners gathered in Belgrade to discuss challenges and lessons learned during implementation of the GIF regional project.

Partners involved in the Greater Internet Freedom, GIF, project, focusing on enhancing digital rights advocacy in the region, met for a two-day event in Belgrade for productive discussions, knowledge sharing and strategic planning on, among others, ensuring the sustainability of the GIF initiative beyond its conclusion in September.

Local partners shared success stories, addressed challenges and crafted plans for continued regional collaboration on digital rights advocacy and policy development.

On the first day, participants reflected on lessons learned from the GIF project, learned how to develop impactful policy briefs, engage civil society in international digital rights forums, and discussed what should be improved in regional cooperation when it comes to content moderation and freedom of expression.

Some of the success stories participants highlighted include BIRN Albania’s advocacy campaign that engaged police and strengthened networks, Metamorphosis’ practical cybersecurity training, and KVART’s streamlined, flexible application process.

Other successes include KCSS’s accessible cybersecurity handbook, Mediacentar’s digital strategy guide and SCIDEV’s simplified procedures.

Participants emphasised the need for a strategic, consistent presence throughout the year, especially on social media. Organisations should tailor content to each platform and focus on understanding target group habits. Additionally, efforts should concentrate on a few core topics, and youth campaigns must customize messages for different platforms.

The meeting closed with sessions on developing a communication strategy, building capacity for digital rights advocacy, and an open-floor discussion on future advocacy strategies, focusing on emerging technologies.

The session on communications provided an overview of the development of the GIF Communication Strategy, with a focus on sharing success stories.

Additionally, Olga Kyryliuk’s session, on CSO Engagement in Digital Rights Spaces, explored opportunities and strategies for local civil society organisations to engage in international digital rights forums, such as the Internet Governance Forum, RightsCon, and SEEDIG.

Participants learned how to navigate these global and regional spaces effectively and how local perspectives can shape global digital rights discussions, fostering stronger connections between local initiatives and international advocacy efforts.

BIRN’s local partners include Mediacentar (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Youth Centre KVART (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Centre Science and Innovation for Development, SCiDEV (Albania), BIRN Albania, BIRN Serbia, the Kosovar Centre for Security Studies, and Metamorphosis (North Macedonia).