August 2020

Serbia Keeps COVID-19 Medical Procurement Data Under Wraps

Posted on August 31, 2020January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Serbia’s National Insurance Health Fund, RFZO, the public institution responsible for medical supplies procurement in Serbia, has declined to answer an FOIA request from BIRN about the amount of medical equipment purchased during the epidemic, the names of suppliers and how much money was spent on it, saying the government had classified such data “top secret” at the outset of the pandemic.

“Data on medical devices, medical equipment, personal and protective equipment, sanitary and medical consumables procured in Serbia during the state of emergency caused by COVID-19, as well as documentation on it, are marked with the security classification ‘top secret,’” RFZO said in a written answer to BIRN.

Under the government’s decision from March 15, which RFZO quoted, information about public procurement during the COVID-19 pandemic will not be made available to the public until the pandemic ends.

In its request sent on August 12, BIRN asked about the quantity of purchased protective masks, protective suits, gloves, hats and tests for COVID-19 and the total amount of money spent on them.

BIRN also asked about the prices at which this equipment was sold to pharmacies, as well as about the registration of medical equipment at the Medicines and Medical Devices Agency of Serbia, which is necessary for the import and placement of those goods on the Serbian market.

Besides that, BIRN requested information about the total amount spent out of 9.5 billion dinars, which the Serbian government transferred to RFZO on March 31, 2020, “in order to mitigate the consequences of COVID-19 disease”. That point was left unanswered, too.

Serbia reported the first cases of COVID-19 in the beginning of March and declared a state of emergency on March 15 that lasted until May 6.

During that time, Serbia was criticised for deciding to lengthen the time state bodies have to answer FOIA requests. It left many journalists having to wait until the state of emergency was lifted before their requests could be answered.

Serbia’s government faces many questions about its general response to the pandemic, amid claims that there was a lack of necessary medical equipment, among other things.

At the end of June, BIRN revealed that Serbia had under-reported COVID-19 deaths and infections. Data from the state’s COVID-19 information system showed that the number of infected patients who had died was twice as large as the number that the authorities announced. Hundreds more people had tested positive for the virus in June than was admitted.

Pandemic May Reshape North Macedonia Media Landscape for Good

Posted on August 28, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

In March this year, as COVID-19 shut down North Macedonia, Ivana Ramadanova was working from home on a story about textile workers being laid off when she got her own marching orders from the news portal Lokalno.mk.

Management told Ramadanova, 36, and three other journalists they would not be needed from the beginning of April. Ramadanova complained to the Labour Inspectorate, arguing she had been fired based on a termination agreement she never signed. But when the company was ordered to take her back, it did so on worse terms. Ramadanova found somewhere else to work.

“It’s a horrible feeling,” she told BIRN. “When someone needs you, you’re good, but at the very first sign of a crisis they get rid of you.”

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, advertising revenues in the media sector have nose-dived around the world, triggering a wave of job losses.

North Macedonia is no different, but the precarious financial state of many media outlets in the Balkan country even before the pandemic means some face a fight to survive. Coupled with new work practices to adhere to social-distancing regulations, the pandemic has the potential to reshape the sector like never before.

“We have a decline in advertising of about 70 per cent,” said Atanas Kirovski, director and editor of Telma TV and head of the Macedonian Media Association, MMA, which represents five television broadcasters with national frequencies.

“It is happening all over the world, and we are no exception,” he told BIRN. “Our business directly depends on the situation. If it takes two years, I do not believe that all media in the country will survive. If it ends earlier, they still have a chance.”

Aid package ‘helpful at the moment’

Two years is the timeframe the World Health Organisation has put on efforts to rein in the novel coronavirus, providing a vaccine proves safe and effective.

Few in North Macedonia believe the state has the resources to keep media outlets alive that long.

According to a survey conducted by the Independent Trade Union of Journalists, 73 per cent of respondents said they needed financial assistance, and 30 per cent said they knew someone in the sector who had lost a job in recent months due to the crisis.

Since March, the state has provided three million euros in aid to the media sector, in the form of direct injections and tax breaks. Of that figure, 1.7 million went to 116 broadcasters, including 500,000 euros to the public broadcaster.

For a period of three months, the state took on the burden of health and pension contributions for employees of media companies that had managed to avoid any layoffs.

Media outlets also benefitted from a blanket aid package for all companies in the country by which the government covered up to 14,500 denars [235 euros] of each employee’s monthly salary.

Kirovski said the measures had cut Telma TV’s financial burden by about 20,000 euros and that the company was able to make regular salary payments.

“The government measures are helpful at the moment,” he said.

Infographic: BIRN

Dangers of state support

That the likes of respected global media giants The Guardian and the BBC have announced job losses since the onset of the pandemic has sent shockwaves through the global media industry.

“When practically two symbols of quality journalism show that they cannot cope with the crisis, what remains for others?” asked Brankica Petkovic, head of the Centre for Media Policy at the Peace Institute in the Slovenian capital, Ljubljana.

While it is only normal in such circumstances that public and private media should turn to the state for help, Petkovic told BIRN, it is crucial that they guard their editorial independence.

This is particularly pertinent in North Macedonia, where the current Social Democrat-led government has yet to fully address the clientelism that characterised relations between the state and the media under former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski between 2006 and 2016.

Mladen Chadikovski, head of the Association of Journalists of Macedonia, said the aid risked turning into a trap.

“When there is a state of emergency as it is now, whether it is officially declared or not, there are dangers of passing solutions that are problematic,” Chadikovski told BIRN. “We would not like to use this period to establish a media fund that would remain and create risks of influencing editorial policy.”

He said media would be better off receiving aid in the former of tax breaks rather than direct transfers from state coffers.

Aid can’t last long

Some media experts believe the recession triggered by the pandemic and the widespread closure of businesses may do what no government or regulator in North Macedonia has dared – cut the number of media outlets.

North Macedonia confronted the pandemic with an unreformed public broadcaster, 115 commercial broadcasting companies, 12 newspapers, hundreds of Internet portals and an advertising pie of about 15-20 million euros.

“The media scene is already in big trouble – many media outlets and a small advertising market,” said Chadikovski. “If the crisis continues, these problems will increase.”

Goran Mihajlovski, owner and editor of the portal Sakam da kazham (sdk.mk), said online journalism was particularly vulnerable. Registered as a non-governmental organisation, his portal also benefits from donor-funded projects.

“If we were dependent on advertisements, we would have not existed either,” he said.

Dejan Georgievski of the Media Development Center, which provides legal and advocacy support to media workers in North Macedonia, said the aid provided by the state was not a long-term solution.

“The aid cannot last more than a few months, half a year at most,” he said

Georgievski is one of only a few media experts in the country to say a reduction in the size of the media sector would not necessarily be a bad thing.

“Those who are lucky to survive will have more resources at their disposal that will help their sustainability and help them offer better content, better information, but also be less dependent on public money and free of any economic and other types of pressure,” he told BIRN.

Working practices changed

Illustration: Unsplash.com

The pandemic has not changed only the financial outlook for media outlets.

Social distancing measures have dramatically altered how journalists do their jobs.

“We have introduced work in shifts, so that if a colleague becomes infected and others have to go into isolation, the other shift can cover the work,” said Telma TV’s Kirovski. “But that meant that we always worked at 50 per cent capacity, while the other 50 per cent was on standby.”

Journalists at most Internet portals and some print media worked from home, encountering the same problems as those in other professions in balancing work and childcare. Smaller newsrooms struggled to adhere to government requirements that the parents of children under 10 years of age be exempted from work.

“I had to be a journalist, a babysitter and a mother at the same time, and the editor was not interested,” said one journalist, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “If I wasn’t online for 15 minutes he would immediately ask where I was.”

Movement restrictions and limited access to data and interviewees have hurt the quality of output, both in terms of content and technical quality.

“Of course it had an impact on the quality of work – the shifts are smaller, there are fewer journalists, editors, cameramen, editors available,” said Chadikovski.

Mihajlovski of Sakam da kazham said: “It’s not easy when you can’t go into the field, talk to people, but instead you have to work from a distance.”

Those who could not work from home or online paid a different price.

“We have to attend all the events, because of which we are constantly under stress, having even panic attacks,” said a journalist of a regional radio station who declined to be named.

Another, in Skopje, told BIRN: “I was talking to a mayor, who shook my hand to say goodbye. I returned the greeting so as not to be rude. A few days later, when he announced that he tested positive for the virus, I was in a terrible panic for the next two weeks.”

“Obviously one moment of carelessness is enough,” said Hristina Belovska, a reporter at TV 24 Television who tested positive during North Macedonia’s July parliamentary election.

“Our work is fieldwork and that cannot be changed. We were provided with protective equipment, we also had training on how to protect ourselves and recommendations not to put ourselves at risk. However, I ended up positive. I discovered it by accident and I do not know how it happened. It just shows how serious the situation with the virus is.”

In the survey conducted by the Independent Trade Union of Journalists, 22 per cent of respondents said they had not been provided with protective equipment.

Nothing will be the same

Ironically, given the financial strain on media, audiences have grown during the pandemic, with television broadcasters reaching twice or three times their usual number of viewers per day between January and June, compared to the same period of 2019 and 2018, according to surveys conducted by the Agency of Audiovisual Media Services.

For example, the percentage of respondents who said they had watched Kirovski’s Telma TV the day before, grew from 12 to 32.

“Undoubtedly, the fact that many people stayed at home and that something completely new was happening that affected everyone and that affected our daily lives, such as the spread of the coronavirus, contributed to a significant increase in media interest,” said Magdalena Davidovska Dovleva, head of the Agency’s Sector for Research and Long-Term Development.

It remains to be seen which of these changes will stick long-term, but all of BIRN’s interlocutors agreed the media landscape will be altered for good.

“The coronavirus has deepened the problems in the media sphere, but it may also help us find faster solutions,” said Petkovic of the Peace Institute in Ljubljana.

This project is financially supported by The Royal Norweigan Embassy in Belgrade. Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of The Royal Norweigan Embassy, the Balkan Trust for Democracy, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, or its partners.

New App Aims to Connect Albanians around the World

Posted on August 21, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

In the 30 years that he lived in Switzerland, Valon Asani says he never had an Albanian friend.

“There weren’t many Albanians in the town I grew up in,” said Asani, who traces his roots to Kosovo. The Albanian diaspora is big, he said, but “is very small compared to the total number of people in the countries these Albanians live in.”

So a year ago, Asani co-founded dua.com, a mobile phone app created to connect members of the sprawling ethnic Albanian diaspora around the world. And roughly 200,000 Albanians have since signed up.

Currently, only the dating arm of dua.com – due.love – is live. But 31-year-old Asani and his team plan to launch dua.help and dua.biz in early 2021.

“Dating represents only a small percentage of our goals,” he said. The ultimate goal is to create a connected global community of Albanians, uniting a diaspora scattered across the globe over the past several decades.

Via dua.help, “Albanians who travel abroad as tourists, students, or even seeking employment opportunities, can connect with Albanians who have been living there for longer and seek assistance in filing taxes, applying for a residence permit, finding a place to live and being able to adapt faster.”

Dua.biz, meanwhile, “will allow Albanian businesses in the world to connect with proper businesses run by Albanians in the Balkans and invest, which will bring revenue, create new jobs and hopefully a product-driven economy” in Kosovo and Albania as well as North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia where Albanians also live.

‘A company of Albanians’

Valon Asani, co-founder and CEO of dua.com. Photo: Courtesy of dua.com

Dua.com – dua means love/want in Albanian – is headquartered in Zurich but has offices also in Pristina, where employees are encouraged to dress casual, take naps when tired and share in cake on special occasions.

The company has plans to open offices in the Albanian capital, Tirana, and elsewhere in the Balkans where Albanians live.

“Though we’re Kosovo Albanians, we don’t want to be known as a Kosovar company but as a company of Albanians,” said Asani.

He said there was a false perception of Albanians abroad as sticking to their own, when in fact the only Albanians that many Albanian children growing up in the diaspora spend time with are their cousins or friends they make on trips back to the countries their parents emigrated from.

Taulant Abazi, the chief sales officer at dua.com had a similar experience growing up in Germany and then moving to the US for his studies.

“In my five years in Detroit, where I moved for my studies, it was not possible to meet Albanians,” said Taulant Abazi, chief sales officer at dua.com.

Adapting in the US but also in Germany, where he grew up, would have been easier had he had “the technological means to meet people of the same origin,” Abazi told BIRN.

Within months of launching, 200,000 users from more than 100 countries had created accounts on dua.com, “and 150,000 matches have been made,” Asani said.

“It’s free to sign up and 100 swipes are available over 12 hours in the free version of the app. If users want to have more swipes and to be able to change their location several times, they will need to sign up for premium.”

‘We will do it’

In the two decades since it broke away from Serbia in war and 12 years since it declared independence, the information and communication technology industry in Kosovo has taken big steps forward, but receives little state support.

According to the Central Bank of Kosovo, the country exported 31 million euros-worth of information and communication technology services between January and May 2020, slightly up on the same period of last year.

Abazi said that Dua Solutions, which he manages, is providing its technology to other industries too, having already signed contracts with firms in Croatia and Romania and entering talks with a company in Turkey.

“The technology developed by dua.com programmers can be used for every group that wants to connect worldwide,” he told BIRN, citing the example of a group of online gamers who contacted Dua Solutions to discuss the possibility of an app that would connect online game fanatics around the world.

“Kosovo is an import-dependent country,” said Asani.

“With the dua.com team we are trying to use what we are good at – developing and maintaining a technology that can be used to connect communities with different interests and backgrounds – to change the narrative and bring revenue via exports”.

Asani said Albanians in the Balkans had to get away from the oft-heard expression, hajt se bohet, meaning ‘it will be done’. “If we continue like that, it never will [be done],” he said. “So, we said, ‘po e bojm na’ – ‘we will do it’.”

Croatia’s Burgeoning Fintech Scene Blazes Trail For Western Balkans

Posted on August 20, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

When it comes to the digitalization of the public sector in the Western Balkans, not that much happened until COVID-19 came along.

But as the pandemic has continued, certain public services have had to become digital by a force of nature, while the pace of others that started on this road in the last few years has accelerated. The same goes for businesses and industries – those that started this process earlier are now ahead of the curve. One industry likely to emerge strengthened by the challenges that the pandemic has brought is financial technologies, fintech as it is known – as more institutions and businesses opt for “digital-only” services.

With an ICT market growing exponentially each year, Croatia is widely seen as the next fintech destination in Southeast Europe.

Some estimates say the country has close to 60,000 active ICT professionals already. It also has many fintech companies with a presence in global markets as far as Southeast Asia.

“Croatia has seen a tremendous improvement of its fintech scene in the past few years, mostly due to people developing their digital skills independently,” Vlaho Hrdalo, chair of the Croatian Association for blockchain and cryptocurrencies, UBIK, told BIRN.

“A recent Eurostat survey showed Croatian young people to be the leading Europeans in the category of digital skills,” he added.

“These young people realized what skills they needed and then acquired them on their own, as no institutional support was available; and it still isn’t.” Hrdalo continued, noting that while global investors are beginning to turn their attention towards Croatia, the local fintech scene still needs further investment.

Success stories, and hurdles up ahead

Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Alexandre Debieve

Croatia’s biggest success story when it comes to fintech and the digital payments sector, arguably, is Microblink, a software company that develops computer vision technology.

When it started in 2013 as a local company, it relied only on the financial resources of its founders. Now it has a global presence in the US, Europe and Southeast Asia, developing AI-powered scanning and data extraction products that more than 100 million end-users use.

Microblink’s products have opened up business opportunities for the company, which has been recognised by the fintech industry. It was listed among Europe’s fastest growing companies for 2020.

The company isn’t planning on stopping now, either. It plans to launch new innovative products that revolutionize the fintech industry.

“Two weeks ago, we launched a first-of-its-kind identity document scanner made to be used directly in a web browser. And we firmly believe in-browser ID scanning holds the potential to reshape the way we onboard financial services for the better,” the company told BIRN in a statement.

Another company to watch is Elektronički računi, a company that primarily provides digital business services. It was founded in 2013, when digital invoicing was beginning to become an important segment of business modernization.

“Since 2014, we have introduced the e-Invoice to tens of thousands of companies,” Josip Kovacec, a member of the board of the company, told BIRN.

“It gave us a foothold in the market in EU member states at the time when the mandatory electronic issue of invoices in public procurement was introduced,” he added.

“The idea was to make the e-Invoice available to everyone, with special emphasis on the SME sector, which usually does not have the financial resources to digitize operations,” Kovacec continued.

He said the company had now positioned itself as the largest private information intermediary on the market, sending about 200,000 e-Invoices a month to the Croatian government service that receives all electronic invoices addressed to public entities.

While there are other successful fintech startups and scale-ups in Croatia, what is lacking, however, is a sense of cohesion that would make the Croatian fintech scene a more powerful trend, experts say.

“There have been meetups and conferences, but the situation around COVID-19 has made such events impossible,” Ivan Brezak Brkan, the founding editor of Netokracija.com, told BIRN.

“For experience and knowledge to compound for the whole community, there has to come a point where they all need to work together to create a ‘fintech scene,’” he added. “A rising tide lifts all fintech – and an active community would help create interest among developers, new companies, and so on.”

Regulation remains a grey area

Illustration: Unsplash/Clifford photography

Besides hosting companies that are developing high-quality fintech products, Croatian towns are also implementing some of those technologies locally.

At the end of June, the town of Sveta Nedelja became one of the first in the whole of the EU to introduce a payment service that includes cryptocurrencies.

Built by another Croatia-based company, the cryptocurrency brokerage Electrocoin, the service enables shops to accept payments in cryptocurrencies for free, converting them into the national currency, the kuna.

However, as financial technologies enter more and more segments of Croatian society, regulations about the way fintech companies conduct their business remain a grey area.

“Not much has happened in this area, as there still are no laws governing fintech, blockchain, or artificial intelligence,” UBIK’s Hrdalo explained.

“UBIK held numerous meetings with Croatian regulators to bridge the gap between galloping industries and dormant laws. This was successful, as the approach of the regulators did change from initial scepticism to acceptance,” he added.

“But without exact rules in place, digital companies in Croatia have to discover where they touch the regulatory perimeter on their own, which isn’t always the best way forward,” he continued.

Experts say general business-related laws affect these companies the most. “For example, high taxes on employment make these companies less competitive than rivals in other markets, and a business-unfriendly administrative system makes it literally uneasy to do business,” Netokracija’s Brkan said.

“While the recently re-elected Prime Minister, Andrija Plenkovic … has said he will make the country more business-friendly, most entrepreneurs remain skeptical,” he noted.

Bureaucratic hurdles and the presence of numerous regulatory bodies pose a challenge for all companies in Croatia.

“Take consumer protection – almost every branch or type of service has its own regulatory agency, and in parts where two branches potentially overlap, there are discrepancies in their procedures,” Kovacec pointed out.

“During the pandemic, most business with the state was digitized, which gave some hope that Croatia could aspire to reach Estonia’s level of digitalization at least. But, with the fall in the number of infections and the reopening of the economy, suddenly everything needs paper again.”

Beacon for the rest of the Balkans

Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Christian Wiediger

As “digital-only” services become the new normal, Croatia’s progress ha the potential to set a trend for the rest of the Western Balkans.

With ICT industries in most Western Balkans countries also among their most prosperous, the potential to be explored is vast.

“We have top IT experts recognised everywhere in the world. But we have not yet realised that this sector can be one of the most important industries in Croatia,” Kovacec claimed.

Recently, North Macedonia took a step towards developing its own digital economy, signing an agreement with financial giant Mastercard. The deal on implementing digital identities would allow its citizens to open bank accounts without being physically present at banks, for example.

This country also has companies that are becoming serious players in the fintech industry, and could potentially follow the Croatian path. “We have one startup that works with storing the digital data and tokens of wealthy people from the Arab world, which the whole insurance industry is talking about,” Skopje-based business consultant Igor Izotov told BIRN.

“Maybe tomorrow we can say the digital tokens and bitcoins of a reality or Hollywood star were stored on a Macedonian software solution,” he mused.

However, for these and similar companies from the region to fully realise their potential, more marketing skills are needed, experts warn.

“As with the rest of the Eastern European startup scene, business skills and scaling are proving most valuable. One low-valued skill in the post COVID-19 era is content creation, inbound marketing and thought leadership,” Brkan explained.

“Self-taught content marketers aren’t given the budgets or the freedom to experiment, so B2B sales for fintech are definitely one of the biggest hurdles – and the strategic use of content for B2B is one of the skills that is lacking,” he concluded.

SEE Digital Rights Network Established

Posted on August 14, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Nineteen organisations from Southeast Europe have joined forces in a newly-established network that aims to advance the protection of digital rights and address the growing challenges posed by the widespread use of advanced technologies in society.

Initiated by Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, and SHARE Foundation, the SEE Digital Rights Network is the first network of its kind focused on the digital environment and challenges to digital rights in Southeast Europe.

The network brings together 19 member organisations – from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia – dedicated to the protection and promotion of human rights, both online and offline.

Each is committed to advancing their work on issues of digital rights abuses, lack of transparency, expanded use of invasive tech solutions and breaches of privacy.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Central and Southeast Europe has seen a dramatic rise in the rate of digital rights violations, in countries where democratic values are already imperiled.

“This endeavour comes at a moment when we are seeing greater interference by state and commercial actors that contribute to the already shrinking space for debate while the exercise of basic human rights is continuously being limited,” said BIRN regional director Marija Ristic.

“The Internet has strong potential to serve the needs of the people and internet access has proved to be indispensable in times of crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Our societies are becoming more digital, which presents a powerful incentive to increase the capacity of organisations dealing with digital developments and regulations in our region.”

During a first joint meeting, the members of the network agreed that the challenges posed by the fast-evolving tech solutions used by states have led to infringements of basic rights and freedoms, while false and unverified information is flourishing online and shaping the lives of people around the region.

The online sphere has already become a hostile environment for outspoken individuals and especially marginalised groups such as minorities, LGBTIQ+ community, refugees and women.

“Digital technology is profoundly changing our societies as it becomes an important part of all spheres of our lives, so we see the diversity of organisations that joined this network as one of its biggest strengths,” said Danilo Krivokapic, director of the SHARE Foundation.

“We can learn so much from each other’s experience, as we have similar problems with governments using technology to exert control over society, especially in times of crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said. “It is also important that we act together when we are trying to restore the balance between our citizens and big companies (Facebook, Google etc) that hold enormous amounts of our personal data and through this exert significant power over us.”

The network’s aim is to build on the skills, knowledge and experience of its members to achieve common goals such as strengthening democracy in the region and protecting individuals in the digital environment.

While cherishing the values of safety, equality and freedom, the work of the SEE Digital Rights Network will be directed at achieving the following goals: to protect digital rights and internet freedoms, enable people to access accurate information, make the internet a safer place, detect and report hate speech and verbal violence online, especially against women and other vulnerable groups, identify online recruitment, which can lead to exploitation, take control of personal data, work to prevent the implementation of intrusive surveillance systems, hold governments accountable for the use and abuse of technology and improve digital literacy in order to prevent violence and exploitation.

The network will aim to increase the level of understanding of complex and worrying trends and practices, trying to bring them closer to the general public in a language it can understand. By creating a common space for discussion and exchange, organisations and the media will be able to increase the impact of their individual efforts directed towards legislative, political and social changes.

For more information about the network please contact: sofija.todorovic@birn.eu or/and nevena@sharedefense.org.

Here you can find the full text of the SEE Digital Right Network Declaration. The Declaration is also available in BCS, Macedonian and Albanian.

The organisations that have joined the network are as follows:

A 11 – Initiative for Economic and Social Rights – Serbia
Balkan Investigative Regional Reporting Network (BIRN) – Bosnia and Herzegovina
Centre for Civic Education – Montenegro
Center for Internet, Development and Good Governance (IMPETUS) – North Macedonia
Civic Alliance (CA) – Montenegro
Civil Rights Defenders (CRD)
Da se zna – Serbia
Gong – Croatia
Homo Digitalis– Greece
Open Data Kosovo (ODK) – Kosovo
Media Development Centre (MDC) – North Macedonia
Metamorphosis Foundation – North Macedonia
Montenegro Media Institute (MMI) – Montenegro
NGO Atina – Serbia
Partners Serbia – Serbia
Sarajevo Open Centre – Bosnia and Herzegovina
Share Foundation – Serbia
Vasa prava BiH – Bosnia and Herzegovina
Zašto ne? – Bosnia and Herzegovina

Facebook Pulls Pro-Trump Network Operating From Romania

Posted on August 7, 2020January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Facebook on Thursday announced it had removed dozens of accounts on Facebook and Instagram operated by people in Romania who claimed to be American supporters of US President Donald Trump, Reuters reported. A few Trump fan pages also created in Romania were shut down as well.

“We removed 35 Facebook accounts, 3 Pages and 88 Instagram accounts,” reads the report in which Facebook informed of the removal of the Romanian-based accounts.

“The people behind this network used fake accounts – some of which had already been detected and disabled by our automated systems – to pose as Americans, amplify and comment on their own content, and manage Pages including some posing as President Trump fan Pages,” the document concluded.

Besides hiding their real locations, some of the cancelled accounts presented “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” that violated the platforms’ rules, Facebook said. Some of the accounts were run by the same persons, using multiple fake identities, for example.

The accounts promoted stories backing Trump’s re-election in November and stressing the support he was allegedly receiving from conservatives, black Americans, Christians and followers of the so-called QAnon conspiracy theory, Reuters said.

QAnon conspiracy followers believe Trump is waging a secret war against an elite of Satan-worshipping paedophiles operating in government, business and the media.

Facebook security policy head Nathaniel Gleicher said the company hadn’t determined yet if the Romanian group was motivated by money, ideology or a government directive.

“This activity originated in Romania and focused on the US. We found this network as part of our investigation into suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior ahead of the 2020 election in the US,” the company added.

The reach of the scrapped accounts seems to have been small, as they were followed by no more than a few thousand other accounts.

Facebook Tightens Rules on Political Ads in Montenegro

Posted on August 6, 2020January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Advertisers who want to run ads about social issues, elections or politics in Montenegro on Facebook will face new tightened, restrictive rules from Thursday, ahead of August 30 parliamentary elections and in line with Facebook’s new transparency regulations, promoted last year.

Advertisers will now have to complete a new authorizations process. It applies to anyone who wants to create or edit ads targeting Montenegro and that reference political figures, political parties or elections.

The social media giant explained that such ads will now also be marked “Paid for by…” as a disclaimer, showing who paid for the specific political ad. To get authorization for such promotions, Facebook will ask for government-issued ID and two official documents.

“We’ll also use it to help detect and prevent risks such as impersonation or ID theft, which helps to keep you and our community safe. It won’t be shared on your profile, in ads or with other admins of your Pages or ad accounts,” Facebook said on its official page.

“We require that the advertiser provide additional information, like a local business address, local phone number, email and website, if they choose to use their organization or Page name in the disclaimer. These requirements hold advertisers accountable for the ads they run on Facebook and Instagram,” the social media giant wrote on its Facebook for Business website.

Political parties in Montenegro have often used social media in ways that are far from transparent during elections and without proper insight about the money spent and audience targeted.

In March, Facebook added Montenegro and some other Balkan countries to the list of regions that will be subject to new political transparency rules.

Enforcement of the new regulations was announced for mid-March, about a month before scheduled parliamentary elections in Serbia and North Macedonia. In the event, both the elections and implementation of the new regulations were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

North Macedonia’s Ruling Party Won Twitter War in Election

Posted on August 6, 2020January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Largely because the COVID-19 outbreak reduced classical campaigning and election rallies, the main political blocs at the July 15 early general elections invested serious attention in social media and in Twitter campaigns.

But what happened within the social network bubbles did not always reflects accurately real life, or the election results.

Despite being twice as active on Twitter, the ruling alliance led by the Social Democrats under Zoran Zaev, pulled off only a wafer-thin victory at the polls, winning 46 of the 120 seats in parliament, just two more than their right-wing rivals in VMRO DPMNE.

BIRN’s comparative analysis on the tweets of the party candidates and the use of their punchline hashtags, done with the help of SHARE foundation, reveals several characteristics.

When it came to their official hashtags, such as “We Can” and “We Care”, used by the Social Democrats, and “Choose Renewal” and “Rise Up Macedonia”, used by VMRO DPMNE, the former were clearly dominant, for example. Ruling alliance hashtags could be seen on more than 5,600 tweets. Those of the opposition were found in just over 2,100.

Yet their strategies were very similar, with party leaders and the electoral lists’ heads in the six electoral districts posting the initial electoral propaganda, and sympathizers disseminating it.

Only some party sympathizers used their personal profiles with their names clearly displayed. Most posts were retweeted by profiles using pseudonyms or just codenames. Thus, one assumption is that these were automatized profiles, or bots.

One difference between them was that the posting of tweets was more evenly spread in the ruling party bloc.

While Social Democratic leader Zaev led the process, much of the party’s communication also originated from other prominent figures, such as Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov, Vice Prime Minister Mila Carovska, Defence Minister Radmila Shekerinska, provisional PM Oliver Spasovski and others – most of them leading the lists of candidates in the six electoral districts.

In the opposition bloc, most of the traffic originated from the profile of the VMRO DPMNE leader, Hristijan Mickoski, or from the official party twitter profile. Compared to these two, the activity of the other opposition party officials was negligible.

Illustration depicting the twitter interactions between the two political blocs: BIRN

While most Twitter posts on Zaev’s profile referred to the alliance’s own campaign points and promises, some 10 per cent were reserved for negative campaigning against the opposition.

Among these negative posts, most suggested that if VMRO DPMNE came back to power, it would mean a “return of the regime” – referencing the authoritarian government of former VMRO DPMNE leader and former prime minister Nikola Gruevski.

Most of the tweets from the profile of opposition leader Mickoski also focused on election promises and on parts of the party’s manifesto. But about 13 per cent of tweets were devoted to attacking the other side.

The most common tweets attacking the Social Democrats referred to alleged “crimes” committed by Zaev, mostly drawing on connections to the high-profile “Extortion” trial in which the former head of the Special Prosecution, SJO, Katica Janeva – once strongly supported by Zaev – and others were found guilty of extortion.

Other posts accused Zaev of undermining the national interest by presiding over important friendship deals with neighbouring Bulgaria and the historic “name” agreement with Greece.

The analysis shows that nine of the ten most shared posts during the campaign were those of Social Democratic officials, with Zaev’ post sharing the official video commercial of their campaign, in which the party says it has achieved a lot and can do even more, being most shared.

The opposition leader posted the tenth most shared post as well. In it, he shared a video advertisement in which he implored young people to stay in the country and to “fight for Macedonia”.

Analyzing overall Twitter communications during the election campaign, Zaev’s name was mentioned most often. His profile was mentioned in 3,100 posts, while that of the opposition leader Mickoski was mentioned in 1,580.

Despite the bitter electoral war waged on Twitter by both blocs and their supporters, neither bloc got exactly what it sought.

Zaev did not win a comfortable majority for a new government to accomplish his promised changes.

Mickoski also failed to persuade enough voters that it was time he took over and started to “strengthen the spines” of the country’s supposedly humiliated citizens.

Albania Courts Seize TV Stations Owned by Govt Critic

Posted on August 3, 2020January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Albania’s Special Prosecutors on Monday said they seized scores of properties of Ylli Ndroqi, one of the main media owners in the country, who has crossed swords with the government, suspecting they were the product of international drugs trading. Among the seized assets are two TV stations, Ora News and Channel One.

“We have reasons to suspect that Ylli Ndroqi (alias Xhemail Pasmaciu) and his relatives have unjustified wealth that might have originated in his criminal activity in Albania, Turkey and Italy,” prosecutors said.

Several apartments, cars, including a Rolls Royce, as well as 100,000 square metres of forested area near Tirana were seized along with the TV stations. Police forces were stationed on the premises of Ora News on Monday afternoon.

The seized television stations have hosted several talks shows critical of the Socialist government of Prime Minister Edi Rama who has made no secret of his frustration with critical media.

Ndroqi has exchanged words personally with Rama ally Tirana Mayor Erion Veliaj on social media, Ndoqi accused Veliaj of attempting to silence his journalists while Veliaj accused Ndroqi of attempting to blackmail him.

Alban Qafa, a defence attorney for the suspect, told journalists that his client’s wealth was legitimate and the seizure order would be fought in the courts. “Ndroqi’s wealth has legitimate sources and we will prove this,” Qafa said, adding that his client suspected that the seizure was the result of a political attack.

Brahim Shima, director of Ora News, also considered the move a politically motivated attack, due to his station’s editorial line.

According to prosecutors, Ndroqi was arrested in Turkey in 1998 under the name Xhemail Pasmaciu while data about his suspected criminal activity were collected by the joint collaboration of Turkish and Italian authorities.

Ndroqi is not currently under arrest or charged as yet.

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