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This article focuses on the international incident sparked by Djokovic's arrival in Australia, unvaccinated, to consider the forms of citizenship associated with the rise of nation branding and its attendant forms of commercial nationalism. The combination of commercial and national identity highlights the convergence of the economic and political characteristics of commercial nationalism. This is a context in which consumer sovereignty reconfigures and displaces civic commitments. To explore the dimensions of this version of citizenship and the tension between its existence and alternative versions, we interviewed 12 Serbian Australians shortly after the Djokovic incident (March-May 2022) and conducted a media textual analysis of Serbian and Australian media. We argue that Djokovic became an avatar for the elevation of a consumerist version of citizenship in which the social contract featured as a form of oppression from which consumers-as-king can exempt themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the violent wars of the 1990s, Bosnia and Herzegovina is heavily promoting its tourism industry with the capital city of Sarajevo as the prime destination. Sarajevo became a city of death during 1992–1995, and its siege remains etched in local and global memories as a time of bombing, horrific shelling of locals, and brutal destruction of the city's cultural heritage. Today Sarajevo faces many dilemmas, including how to remember the 1990s trauma and how to represent the city to citizens and foreign visitors. Here we explore how Sarajevo journalists remember the city's recent violent conflict, and how war memory becomes commodified and branded for tourism. Furthermore, we analyse how prominent global media represent Sarajevo as a tourism destination after the war. On the basis of in-depth interviews with Sarajevo journalists, and an analysis of travel reviews in prominent international publications, we argue that Sarajevo is a place where branding and memories converge. Sarajevo is transformed into a tourist attraction where trauma of the past is being sold, while promising some authentic path towards understanding the violent past. Local journalists and global media alike frame the city as a “brand” while celebrating the inherent authenticity of post-war travel in order to promote and sell Sarajevo. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article looks at the emergence and potentials of a Balkan cultural studies. I argue that the productivity of a Balkan cultural studies lies in its willingness to engage with popular culture as a very real political force in the revolutionary transformations from the 1980s on. Some recent cultural developments are presented here to show how the mix of culture and cultural studies contributes to the political relevance and academic vibrancy of Balkan cultural studies, which captures the imagination of students in the region precisely because of its engaged character and its contemporary relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illustrates how Slovenian national public television came to serve as a central site of contention where fundamental issues of identity, politics and national culture were challenged, negotiated and defined. The Slovenian case offers an interesting laboratory for an analysis of the role of journalism in creating and asserting a particular version of national identity. This article explores how Slovenian television's elites (journalists, editors and officials) articulate the importance of public television as the ‘machine that creates Slovenians’. Based on an analysis of roughly twelve interviews with journalists of Slovenian national television, I argue that one of the most important cultural and political institutions in the creation, maintenance and reinforcement of Slovenian national identity was, and continues to be, national public television. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]