Stories from Quick Reads and North Macedonia
Suspected Government #SelfieMacedonia Campaign Backfires
A Facebook campaign with the hashtag #SelfieMacedonia was launched in March 2014 and Macedonian social media users now suspect that the country's government is behind it all. Bouts of young social media users from Macedonia, individually or in groups, have been taking photos of themselves, typically called “selfies”, and sharing...
Macedonian Government to Introduce Internet Filtering
Airborne blog commented on the Macedonian government's plan to set up a new company to provide online betting and other gambling to residents of Macedonia: The plan will involve “disabling of betting/gambling online games on foreign web sites”. This blockade is set to last two years beginning in March 2014....
Activists Add Female Heroines to Wikipedia in Macedonian
The informal citizens’ group “Fight Like a Woman”, (@borisezenski), organized a mini marathon with the purpose of adding articles about notable women from Macedonia to Wikipedia in Macedonian to raise awareness about women's rights and gender equality. The campaign involved activists working within the site of International Women's Day celebrations...
Macedonian Students Campaign Against Unlivable Conditions in Dormitories
Macedonian students demanding better life conditions in public university dormitories published a blog entitled “Operacija studentski” [mk] (“Operation Dorm”) displaying photos of everyday life in the facilities and urging students to contribute. Many of the photos show highly inadequate living conditions in the student dormitories. The blog and photos have...
New Macedonian Public Service Campaign Calls Drug Users “Mules”
Over the last seven years, the Government of the Republic of Macedonia has spent undisclosed amounts of taxpayers money to produce and air public service campaigns against drug use and drug trafficking. A new campaign has been launched by the government, calling drug users “mules”. Artist Ines Efremova tweeted: Слоганот...
Macedonia's Strumica Carnival Continues 350-Year Tradition
The Strumica Carnival took place in Macedonia from March 1-3, 2014. This traditional celebration [mk] was first mentioned as early as 1670 by Ottoman travel writer Evliya Çelebi and this year was featured by NBC News in a report about twelve similar events around the world. Photo-activist Vanco Dzambaski shared...
Macedonian Twitter Community Organizes Second Annual Blood Drive
A group of Macedonian Twitter users are organizing a blood drive on March 17, 2014, in Skopje, the second of its kind – the first took place in September 2013.
A Historian's Pessimistic Farewell to Macedonia
Historian, analyst and blogger Harald Schenker, who has lived in Macedonia since 1999 and is now moving to Switzerland, created social network buzz with his farewell post, addressed to a “failing Macedonia”, in which he provides a diagnosis for the country's demise and a plea for rebuilding Macedonian society. The...
Macedonia: Ohrid's Hidden Medieval Masks
A traveling blogger and communications specialist in the tourism industry, Tricia A. Mitchell, tells of her curious find in Macedonia's UNESCO registered Ohrid old town.
Police Brutality in Macedonia: Two Years On
On Thursday, June 6, in the center of Skopje, the Movement Against Police Brutality will mark two years since the murder of Martin Neshkovski, which sparked massive grassroots protests in Macedonia in the summer of 2011. The Facebook event [mk] about the memorial service states: On Thursday, June 6, at...
Macedonian Journalist's Arrest Stirs Protest
Macedonian journalists gathered [mk; video and text: sq, mk] in front of the Criminal Court in the capital Skopje today to protest against the arrest of their colleague, Tomislav Kezarovski, according to this note [en] posted in the Macedonian Facebook group titled “Journalists and citizens in defense of the right...
“Manipulative” Coverage of Macedonia's Media Law
“Practice indicates that responsible and ethical journalism is never the result of state legislation and regulations, but of the voluntary compliance with the code created by the media community itself.” This statement from the Guide on Ethics in Journalism [mk] opens Žarko Trajanoski's analysis [en] of the “manipulations” by Macedonia's...
Running 1,000 Miles for Europe's Trafficked Children
This month, Rob Martineau, Tom Stancliffe, and Guy Hacking are running 1,000 miles from Odessa to Dubrovnik, via Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Croatia, as part of the Run For Love 1000 campaign, whose aim is to raise funds for Love146, a UK charity that “gives care...
Macedonia's Media Law Lacks Media's Input
The Association of Journalists of Macedonia (AJM) explains [en] why Macedonian journalists are demanding an open debate “on the scope and the contents” of the draft Law on the Media (via @Macedonia_en): […] It was prepared, in its entirety, by the Government and is offered today to the public to...
Shedding Light on Macedonia's “Black Monday”
In order to shed light on the events of Dec. 24, 2012, when journalists and opposition MPs were thrown out of the Macedonian Parliament [en, es, mk], Foundation Open Society Institute Macedonia (@fosim) published a study entitled “Black Monday” [.pdf: en, mk, sq], with testimonies of witnesses and participants and...
Hello Spring, Goodbye Evil Eye
Μάρτης [el], мартеница [bg], мартинка [mk], mărțișor [ru]…however you call it, an ancient tradition [el] with multiple variations that takes place in the Balkans. So, weave your red-and-white threads for protection against the “evil eye” or to welcome Spring!
“The Un-European Union”
GV Author Filip Stojanovski, on his blog Razvigor, has translated into English a mock story [sr] by Njuz.net, “the Serbian equivalent to The Onion,” about the UK striving to join “the Un-European Union”: The Council of Ministers of the countries of the Un-European Union stated today in Skopje that a...
Macedonian Sports Journalist Protests Harassment
A prominent Macedonian sports journalist Igor Filevski, who works as a correspondent from Spain, announced [mk] on his blog that he will no longer cover Macedonian sports in order to protest the silence of his colleagues and relevant institutions, who have been patiently ignoring the harassment inflicted on him for...
Macedonians Ask State News Agency to Stop Manipulations
An online initiative against media manipulations [mk] perpetrated by the state-owned Macedonian Information Agency (MIA) asks citizens to express their dissatisfaction by sending e-mails to the agency. The action was spurred by the latest example of blatant spin, when a MIA correspondent distorted U.S. diplomat Philip Reeker‘s statement about the...
