[ Civil society ]

The post-war period in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo are characterised by a spectacular "NGO boom", supported by the presence of international donors, which had huge amounts to spend for "democratisation" and "civil-society building".

While most of these organisations stopped to exist after one or two projects, there are still a few hundred active civil society organisations in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. As the competition for donor money, for public attention, and for members is getting more and more challenging, civil society organisations are developing creative means of self-representation, increasingly using the internet, newsletters, and blogs for information and protest campaigns.

In this study I analyse the websites of 32 civil society organisations which are active in Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The language and symbols used by civil society organisations reveal how they try to anticipate the expectations of their "followers" - and how they try to attract international donors, which significantly shape the self-representation, thus the perception, of civil society in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo.