Building the Media Bridge: Uniting Youth in Divided Yugoslavia

This article describes how community-based media can play a key role in bridging racial tensions and hatred in war torn areas of Yugoslavia. The author asks "What do you do to ease racial tensions stemming from a war in which neighbours killed neighbours and friends turned on friends?" His article then describes a number of situations where community-based media efforts initiated by youth have helped bring together people with different ethnic backgrounds.

Shore describes an interview that he held with Gezim Plakolli, whose work includes facilitating conflict resolution and promoting non-violent dialogue between groups of young people from the Albanian and Serbian communities. According to Gezim, the process takes a long time. In one instance he described it taking six months just to bring those two groups together. The author points out that because older people are more difficult to rid of racist sentiments, Gezim focuses on young people and has experienced much success.

One project that Gezim was involved with included a workshop that brought together 15 Albanian and 15 Serbian youths that were taught to train other interested young adults. This process continues today through internet, video and radio. According to
Gezim, a number of media initiatives have been financed along these lines in Yugoslavia.

Gezim mentions that five years ago, there was no media produced in Kosovo. Now four broadcast sources exist, including his magasine. He also refers to a local NGO coalition opening an additional radio station aiming to cover women's issues specifically.

In spite of the encouraging news of these media initiatives, Shore's article also mentions that renewed violence in Kosovo led to thousands of Serbs being forced from their homes in March 2004. And as Shore states "the success of [Gezim's] projects illustrates
the key role community-based media can and should play in creating understanding, and building a peaceful society—even in the wake

of hatred and death. Perhaps the more recent conflicts in Kosovo also show that the need for more such initiatives is stronger than we thought."