Misinformation Through Selective Information Geared Toward Anti-EU Narrative Building

Authors

  • Katerina Kolozova Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje

Keywords:

Misinformation, Anti-EU Narratives, Euroscepticism, EU Accession, Russian Influence, North Macedonia

Abstract

This paper examines how misinformation and selective information framing drove anti-EU sentiment in North Macedonia following the 2022 proposal of the EU negotiating framework (the “French Proposal”). Focusing on the 2020–2024 period, the study uses qualitative discourse analysis (70 analyzed templates) and quantitative digital data harvesting across platforms like Twitter/X, YouTube, and digital media outlets.
The primary finding highlights an unusual convergence between traditional pro-Russian nationalist actors (e.g., Levica, VMRO-DPMNE) and “unusual suspects”—historically pro-Western, EU- and USAID-funded NGOs, think tanks (such as EPI and IDSCS), and prominent public figures. Both groups leveraged tropes portraying the EU accession framework as a threat to Macedonian national identity (“Bulgarianization”) and framed the EU as duplicitous and unyielding. This narrative promoted euro-nihilism, advocating for frozen negotiations, “full sovereignty,” or regional alternatives like “Open Balkans”.
Quantitative tracking revealed heavily shared anti-framework content, peak usage of anti-EU/nationalist hashtags, and significant overlap with Serbian media narratives that facilitate indirect Russian influence. The study concludes that inadvertent anti-EU rhetoric from reputable, civil-society actors mainstreamed euro-skepticism, normalizing a state of stalled EU integration and geopolitical limbo in North Macedonia.

Author Biography

Katerina Kolozova, Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje

Katerina (Katarina) Kolozova, PhD. is the director of the Institute in Social Sciences and Humanities-Skopje and a professor of philosophy, epistemology and gender studies at ISSHS and also at the University American College, Skopje and a visiting professor at Arizona State University-Center for Philosophical Technologies. She is also visiting professor at several universities in Southeastern Europe, most notably at the Department of Political Studies of FMK-Belgrade. In 2009, Kolozova was a visiting scholar at the Department of Rhetoric (Program of Critical Theory) at the University of California-Berkeley, under peer supervision of prof. Judith Butler. Katerina Kolozova was a Columbia University NY-SIPA Visiting Scholar at its Paris Global Centre in 2019 working on issues of authoritarianism and feminism in Europe. Author of the books: Cut of the Real: Subjectivity in Poststucturalist Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 2014), Toward a Radical Metaphysics of Socialism: Marx and Laruelle (Brooklyn New York: Punctum Books, 2015), After the ‘Speculative Turn’: Realism, Philosophy, and Feminism (co-author, Brooklyn New York: Punctum Books 2016) and Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals: Non-Philosophical Critique of the Automata of Capital and Patriarchy (London UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). Her articles and chapter published in the last few years are: Chapter 9 “Poststructuralism” in the Oxford Handbook for Feminist Philosophy (Oxford UK: Oxford University Press, 2021) and Kolozova, Katerina (2023). “The Ebb of the Old Liberal Order and the Horizon of New Possibilities for Freedom,” In Adrian Parr & Santiago Zabala (eds.), Outspoken: A Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century (Toronto CA: McGill-Queen’s University Press), pp. 39-46. She is also the author of numerous interdisciplinary policy studies dedicated to the issues of “illiberal democracy,” partocratic mechanisms of state-capture in “hybrid regimes,” policy critique of repressive technocracy in the legislation of the authoritarian neoliberal post-socialist states in Europe. Reforms in the educational and scientific sector and their consistent alignment with the principles and documents of the Bologna process, and especially the implementation of the EU strategic goal of the “twin transition” (digital and green) in the process, is one of the main topics of Kolozova’s current policy analyses. In the period 2021-2022, as a volunteer, she volunteered in the team of experts who advised the Ministry of Education on the subject of reforms in the science sector. Since August 2023, she has been engaged by the Secretariat for European Affairs as an expert on Chapter 26, Cluster 3 of the EU related reforms and consistent application of the Bologna process.

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Published

2026-10-29

How to Cite

Kolozova, K. (2026). Misinformation Through Selective Information Geared Toward Anti-EU Narrative Building. Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, 1(1), 60-81. Retrieved from https://mail.identitiesjournal.edu.mk/index.php/IJPGC/article/view/732

Issue

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

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Articles

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