Ms. Veliu examines "balkanization" as a long-standing discourse of identity construction, otherness and stereotyping through Twitter. Although deriving from the Balkans and attached to the Balkan Peninsula, the "balkanization" discourse has gained a life of its own. The speaker challenges its current manifestations shaped by the era of social media and identifies and connects its meanings with deeper processes of historical events. This lecture denaturalizes ‘balkanization’ as a constructed source of knowledge, approaching the topic embedded in genealogy and deconstructivism, and applies critical discourse analysis as a method of research.
Liridona Veliu is a fourth-year PhD student at the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University and a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois. Her research focuses on the links between ‘balkanization’ and the Euro-Atlantic integration processes of Western Balkans. Her monograph, #Balkanization: A Critical Study of Otherness through Twitter, was published by Springer in 2018.
