Montenegro’s government confirmed on Monday that it will pay compensation of 300 euros each, of a total of 816,000 euros, to citizens on the list of people ordered to self-isolate during 2020 whose names were published.
According to government data, 2,720 persons filed lawsuits against the state for publishing their names on lists of people ordered to self-isolate.
“Last December, the government agreed to pay 300 euros each in damages to every citizen whose name was published on those lists. The compensation will be paid for violation of personal rights by publishing personal data,” the government told BIRN.
Podgorica-based lawyer Dalibor Kavaric, who represented most of the citizens filing lawsuits, said the government had violated their human rights despite its claims that this was done in the public interest.
“The state has an obligation to protect the rights of every citizen even when it comes to the public health interest. When those lists were published, there was increased fear in the public due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of that, those people were stigmatized, as they were presented as a public threat,” Kavaric told BIRN.
“We are not satisfied with the amount of compensation, as it should be at least ten times higher,” he added.
The government published the names on March 21, 2020, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite warnings from opposition parties and civic society organisations that it risked violating their constitutionally guaranteed human rights. They also warned that citizens whose names were published might sue the state.
The government insisted it had a right to publish the names because some citizens were not respecting self-isolation obligations.
It said it had approval for its actions from the Agency for Personal Data Protection. It also stressed that the security forces could not control every citizen who should be in self-isolation and that anyone who failed to self-isolate posed a threat to the community.
On March 22, 2020, then Prime Minister Dusko Markovic said no compromises would be made with those who violated preventative measures amid the pandemic. He also warned that the government would continue to publish the names of citizens who had been ordered to self-isolate.
“The lives of our citizens are the priority. We have estimated that the right to health and life is above the right to unconditional protection of personal data,” Markovic said.
But after the Civic Alliance NGO submitted an appeal to the Constitutional Court, on July 23, 2020, the court annulled the government’s decision to publish the names of citizens ordered to self-isolate – although it did not rule that the government had violated their rights. The government then removed the list from its website.
In last year’s progress report, the European Commission urged Montenegro to award compensation for the publication of the names, warning that the government had violated people’s constitutional right to privacy.
At first, journalist Tugay Can had no idea why he had been taken in for police questioning on March 25 last year in the Turkish port city of Izmir. Then cybercrime officers told him he was suspected of spreading fear and panic because of a report he wrote, published two days earlier, about COVID-19 outbreaks in two community health centres in the city that were subsequently quarantined.
“After I confirmed it with my sources, I reported the situation”, Can, who at the time worked for the local Izmir newspaper Iz Gazete, told BIRN.
Pressed to name his sources, Can refused. Hours of questioning resulted in a charge of spreading fake news and causing panic. The case was dropped several months later, but Can’s chilling experience was far from a one-off.
According to the media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders, Can was among 10 Turkish editors and reporters interrogated just in March of last year concerning their coverage of the pandemic that had just begun.
“Governments are using the pandemic as an advantage over freedom speech,” Can said.
Turkey is well-known for its jailing of journalists, but it was not the only country in the region to employ draconian tools to control the pandemic narrative. Nor have journalists been the only targets.
BIRN has confirmed dozens of cases in which regular citizens have faced charges of causing panic on social media or in person. There are indications the true number of cases runs into the hundreds.
Whether dealing with accurate but perhaps unflattering news reports or with what the World Health Organisation called last year an “infodemic” of false information, governments have not hesitated to turn to social media giants to get hold of the information that could help them track down those deemed to be breaking the rules.
“Every government has a duty to promote reliable information and correct harmful and untrue allegations in order to protect the personal integrity and trust of citizens,” said Tea Gorjanc Prelevic, head of the Montenegrin NGO Human Rights Action.
“But any measure taken to combat misinformation should not violate the fundamental right to expression.”
Internet sites shut down
Illustration: Unsplash.com
Battling an invisible enemy, governments across the region have sought to restrict information while cracking down on media reporting or social media posts that deviate from the official narrative. ‘Misinformation’ has been criminalised.
Some of these restrictions were part of the states of emergency that were declared; others were introduced with new legislation that outlasts any temporary emergency decrees.
But who draws the line between the right to free speech and the need to preserve public order?
In its November 2020 COVID and Free Speech report, the Council of Europe rights body cautioned that “crisis situations should not be used as a pretext for restricting the public’s access to information or clamping down on critics.”
But that’s precisely what has happened in some countries.
In Hungary, the Penal Code was amended to criminalise the dissemination of “false or distorted facts capable of hindering or obstructing the efficiency of the protection efforts” for the duration of a state of emergency, first between March and June and again since November.
Parliament subsequently passed a bill making it easier for governments to declare such emergencies in future. In March, the government introduced punishments of one to five years in prison for spreading “falsehoods” or “distorted truth” deemed to obstruct efforts to combat the pandemic.
Similar restrictions were imposed in Bosnia’s mainly Serb-populated Republika Srpska entity and in Romania.
The Centre for Independent Journalism, CJI, an NGO that promotes media freedom and good journalistic practices, has raised concern that provisions enacted as part of a state of emergency between mid-March and mid-May 2020 to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus in Romania could hamper the ability of journalists to inform the public.
“The most worrying aspect of all this is, from my perspective, the limitations to the access to information of public interest,” said CJI executive director Cristina Lupu.
“The lack of transparency of the authorities is a very bad sign and the biggest problem our media faces now,” Lupu told BIRN, lamenting the fact it left the public without “access to timely information.”
In March 2020, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, raised concern about what it said was the “removal of reports and entire websites, without providing appeal or redress mechanisms” in Romania.
The Venice Commission, the CoE’s advisory body on constitutional affairs, stressed that even in emergency situations, exceptions to freedom of expression must be narrowly construed and subject to parliamentary control to ensure that the free flow of information is not excessively impeded.
“It is doubtful whether restrictions on publishing “false” information about a disease that is still being studied can be in line with the [Venice Commission] requirement unless it concerns blatantly false or outright dangerous assertions,” it said.
Instead of prevention, fines and prison terms
Early on in the pandemic, the Republika Srpska government issued a decree allowing it to introduce punitive measures, including fines, for spreading ‘fake news’ about the virus in the media and on social networks during the state of emergency.
According to the decree, anyone using social or traditional media to spread ‘fake news’ and cause panic or public disorder faced possible fines of between 500 and 1,500 euros for private individuals and 1,500 and 4,500 euros for companies or organisations. It is not known how many people have been fined. The decree was dismissed in April.
In Montenegro, Article 398 of the Criminal Code, introduced in 2013, foresees a fine or a prison sentence of up to 12 months for the spreading of false news or allegations which cause panic or serious disturbances of public order or peace. For journalists, the punishment runs to three years in prison. The law was hardly used until protests erupted at the end of 2019 over a controversial religious freedom law.
In July 2019, long before the pandemic, North Macedonia’s government unveiled an action plan to deal with ‘fake news’, and doubled down in March 2020 with a vow to punish anyone deemed to be sharing disinformation about the novel coronavirus.
Skopje-based communications and new media specialist Bojan Kordalov said authorities would be better off focusing on prevention and raising awareness.
“It is necessary to build a system of active and digital transparency, as well as to create a real strategy for fast and efficient two-way communication of institutions with citizens and the media, which means highly-trained and prepared staff for 24-hour monitoring and publication of official and credible information to the public,” Kordalov told BIRN.
In Turkey, media censorship, particularly of online outlets, has increased since the onset of the pandemic, according to a report published in November by the Journalists’ Association of Turkey.
According to the report, between July and September 2020 alone, RTUK, the state agency for monitoring, regulating and sanctioning radio and television broadcasts, issued 90 penalties against independent media, including halts to broadcasting and administrative fines.
The government also passed several new draconian laws concerning digital rights and civil society organisations, forcing social media companies to appoint legal representatives to respond to government demands, including those requiring the closure of accounts or deleting of social media posts.
It is not known how many people were investigated or arrested under the new measures, but administrative fines during the pandemic totalled roughly one billion Turkish liras, or 115 million euros.
‘Fake news’ arrests
Illustration: Unsplash.com
In North Macedonia, fake news stories shared on social media ranged from a report that a garage was being used as a COVID-19 testing facility to health authorities being accused of negligence that led to the death of two sisters from COVID-19 complications. One fake story claimed food shortages were imminent.
According to the country’s Ministry of Interior, by September 2020 authorities had acted on a total of 58 cases stemming from the alleged dissemination of fake news related to COVID-19. Thirty-one cases were forwarded to prosecutors and criminal charges have been pressed in three, a ministry spokesman told BIRN.
In Serbia, the penalty for the crime of causing disorder and panic is imprisonment for between three months and three years, as well as a fine. According to Serbian Interior Ministry, in the first two months of the pandemic dozens of people were charged.
After she broke news about the disarray in the Clinical Centre of Vojvodina, Serbia’s northern province, Nova.rs reporter Ana Lalic was questioned by police and her home was searched.
In neighbouring Montenegro, a heated political row over a disputed law on religions saw some people arrested for spreading panic even before the country confirmed its first case of COVID-19.
BIRN was able to confirm 14 cases in which journalists, editors and members of the public were arrested for causing panic.
Similarly in Turkey, the interior ministry investigated, fined and detained hundreds of people in the first few months of the pandemic over their social media posts. Later, however, the ministry stopped publishing such data.
Critics say the government was determined to muzzle complaints about its handling of the pandemic and the economy.
“Turkey in general has a problem when it comes to freedom of speech,” said Ali Gul, a lawyer and rights activist. “The government increases its pressure because it does not want people to speak about its failures.” Ali Gul.
In Croatia, no journalist has been charged with spreading fake news during the pandemic, but that’s not to say there was not any misleading information.
“Without any hesitation, I can say that, unfortunately, a large number of citizens have been involved in spreading false news,” said Tomislav Levak, a teaching assistant and PhD candidate at the Academy of Art and Culture in the eastern Croatian city of Osijek. “But in my opinion, in most cases, it is actually unintentional because they do not think critically enough.”
The Interior Ministry said that it had registered 40 violations of Article 16 of the Law on Misdemeanors against Public Order and Peace, “which are related to the COVID-19 epidemic”.
Rise in state requests to social media giants
The transparency reports of Facebook and Twitter shed light on the scale of government efforts to find and track accounts suspected of spreading panic.
According to Twitter, in 2020 emergency disclosure requests – when law enforcement bodies seek account information – accounted for roughly one out of every five global information requests submitted to Twitter, increasing by 20 per cent during the reporting period while the aggregate number of accounts specified in these requests increased by 24 per cent.
Turkey accounts for three per cent of all government requests for information from Twitter.
In the first six months of last year, Turkey registered a 160 per cent increase in emergency requests compared to the same period in 2019.
North Macedonia saw a 175 per cent increase.
In terms of removal requests, they multiplied several times over from Serbia, Turkey and Poland.
As for Facebook, Turkey last year submitted 6,171 requests, a threefold increase from 2019. In 4,904 cases, Facebook disclosed data, compared to 1,513 cases in 2019. Poland made 4,572 requests, up from 3,397 in 2019, and received information back in 2,666 cases, compared to 1,902 the previous year.
When it comes to legal process requests – when states ask for account information to aid an investigation – Turkey and Poland lead the region with 6,143 and 4,200 requests respectively, roughly double the numbers in 2019.
Compared to the same period in 2019, Facebook data shows a significant rise in all sorts of requests from most countries in the region.
In terms of preservation requests – when law enforcement bodies ask Facebook to preserve account records that may serve as evidence in legal proceedings – Bosnia and Herzegovina registered an increase of just over 150 per cent.
Turkey accounts for 3.55 per cent of and Poland 2.63 per cent of all government requests for information from Facebook.
Lawsuits designed to silence
And if that wasn’t enough, some media faced lawsuits that watchdogs say were designed simply to stop the free flow of information – a so-called SLAPP, or Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, the purpose of which is to censor or intimidate critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defence.
In Poland, the publisher and journalists of the weekly Newsweek Polska were subjected to a SLAPP for their reporting on Polish clothing company LLP, owner of the Reserved brand, which the weekly said had been sending masks bought in Poland to its factories in China despite a severe shortage in Poland.
The company is seeking damages of €1.37 million, an apology, the removal of articles about LPP published on March 22 and a “ban on disseminating claims that suggest that the company’s position on this matter is untrue.”
The case is ongoing.
Also in Poland, a court dismissed lawsuits brought against media outlet Wyborcza by Polish KGHM, one of the world’s biggest producers of copper and silver, over stories revealing that the company had paid huge sums of money for worthless masks from China.
In Turkey, a court granted a take-down request by pasta producer Oba Makarna over a report that 26 of its factory workers in the south-central city of Gaziantep had tested positive for COVID-19. According to the court ruling, while the report was true, it damaged the company’s commercial reputation.
In its report, the CoE warned that restrictions introduced during the pandemic could give rise to increased use of civil lawsuits, particularly defamation cases.
“While their use did not increase dramatically during the height of the pandemic, there is some concern that pandemic-related reporting will be subjected to SLAPP lawsuits and defamation cases in the future, it said.
The day starts with coffee and unread messages: a few from friends, a few work related, a paid furniture ad, and one with lots of exclamation marks that indicates that it must be read immediately before it is deleted from the Internet. This is because it reveals a big secret, hidden from ordinary people.
That “secret” may refer to the “fake” pandemic, the “dangerous” new vaccine, the “global conspiracy against Donald Trump”, the “dark truth about child-eating elites” – an especially a popular term – and so on.
The sender or sharer may well be an ordinary person that we know personally or through social networks, and who sends such content for the first time or occasionally.
Spreading misinformation through personal messages has become increasingly common in North Macedonia, as elsewhere.
But this is not the only novelty. As the fight against fake news has intensified, with changes of algorithms on social networks and the inclusion of independent fact-checkers, so have the techniques that allow false content to remain undetected on social networks for as long as possible.
“Sending personal messages is an attempt to spread misinformation faster, before it can be detected,” explains Rosana Aleksoska, from, Fighting Fake News Narratives, F2N2, a project led by the well-known Skopje based NGO MOST, which searches for misinformation on the Internet.
Among the newer methods used to avoid detection, she notes, is the mass sharing of print screens instead of whole texts, and, in countries that use Cyrillic script like North Macedonia, Cyrillic and Latin letters are deliberately mixed.
Spreaders of misinformation are always in search of new ways to avoid detection. Illustration photo: BIRN
See and share before it’s removed
One video that recently went viral on social networks in North Macedonia, fuelling panic about COVID vaccines, was released on December 8.
In it, a former journalist appears to interpret a document outlining possible contra-indications in and side-effects from the newly developed Pfizer vaccine against COVID-19 – but presents them as established facts.
It got more than 270,000 views and 5,300 shares on Facebook.
While the video reached a large audience, those numbers only partly show just how far the misinformation spread.
The video soon found itself in the inboxes of many other people, after Facebook acquaintances sent it to them in a direct message, urging them to see it as soon as possible, before it was deleted or marked as fake.
People who believe in conspiracy theories, or regularly participate in disseminating them, send direct messages to each other, informing them that new material has been released.
At a first glance, one might think it sounds like a small obscure group, hanging out online.
But the results of a recent public opinion poll conducted by the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group, BiEPAG, showed that only 7 per cent of the population in the region do not believe any of the best-known conspiracy theories, and over 50 per cent believe in all of them. The combined percentage of all those who said they believed in all or just in some of the theories was over 80 per cent.
With these huge numbers, it is not surprising that more misinformation also ends up in the virtual mailboxes of those who “don’t believe”, persuading them to switch sides. Some of these people receive three or four such messages a week.
What the messages have in common is that they are accompanied by urgent words: “See this before they delete it from Facebook”, or, “Share and disseminate”, or “They could no longer remain silent, take a look”, etc.
Because people pay more attention to personal messages than to other social media posts, they are more likely to see this content. They may well also spread them, explains Bojan Kordalov, a Skopje-based expert on social networks and new media.
“The way they are set up and designed, fake news gives people a strong incentive to spread them,” he said.
The pandemic was the main topic of misinformation this year, but in North Macedonia this topic intertwines with others, ranging from Euro-Atlantic integration to politics, Aleksoska from F2N2 observes.
“The object of the attack is people’s emotions – to provoke an intense reaction,” she says.
As the year went on, the subject of messages also changed. At first they focused on the “false” nature of the virus, and then later on how there was no need to wear masks or observe social distancing and other health-protection measures.
After the breakthrough in discovering a vaccine was made, the messages began to focus on the alleged dangers and health risks of vaccination.
The way they are set up and designed, fake news gives people a strong incentive to spread them. Illustration photo: BIRN
“Don’t believe, check” – as we instruct you
The video about the supposed effects of the vaccine that gained traction in North Macedonia is a typical example of what typical disinformation looks like. Similar videos are produced every day.
Among the private messages received by social networks users are videos of people posing as doctors from the US, Canada, Belgium, Britain or Germany, filming themselves with webcams, warning that vaccines may well be deadly.
In one video, which focuses on reading the instructions on the Astra Zeneca vaccine, it is also clear that the creators of fake news use the same messages as those who fight fake news, such as: “Don’t believe, check”.
However, they also provide the guidelines about what to “check”.
“Don’t trust us, investigate for yourself. For example, visit these sites. Or google this term, ChAdOx-1. See here, it says – micro cloning,” the narrator in this video can be heard saying as the inscriptions from the vaccine packaging are displayed.
“They convince us that it is safe, but the traces are here in front of us,” the narrator adds, in a dramatic tone.
The pandemic was the main topic of misinformation this year. Illustration photo: BIRN
Finding new ways to bypass filters
Although outsiders have no direct insight into exactly how social networking algorithms detect suspicious content, as they are business secrets, many experts on these technologies told BIRN that certain assumptions can be drawn.
As the creators of disinformation can also be technologically savvy, they have likely drawn their own conclusions and seek new ways to bypass known filters.
One common alarm is when content goes viral quickly. This signals to social networks that the content needs to be checked. But if several different messages containing the same main point are sent, instead of one identical message, the protection algorithms may have a harder time detecting the content’s risk.
Apart from masking the content, spreaders of misinformation use different formats to avoid detection.
Print screens of articles and of social media posts may be shared instead of the actual articles or posts. Some users even do this with their own posts, and republish them as photos.
“Print screens are common in conducting disinformation campaigns. This is just one of the mechanisms they use,” Aleksoska explains. “The problem is much bigger, so the answer must be comprehensive and coordinated.”
Print screens are not only more difficult for the software to detect, but make it harder for people to check, especially if the name of the media outlet that published the content is omitted or cut from the photo.
The part of the internet in North Macedonia recently saw a print screen from a Swiss media outlet circulating with the title in German reading: “Currently no vaccine can be approved.” Hundreds of people shared it.
The publisher that first spread this print screen claimed that the Swiss had rejected the German vaccine “because of the risk of death”.
But the real text does not say at all that Switzerland rejected the German vaccine but only that it will first implement a risk control strategy “to prevent side effects or fatalities”.
This way, those who spread fake news have a clear advantage over those who fight to stop it.
In order to reach the original article, one has to first rewrite the title in German in a search engine, find the text with an identical title among the results and translate it with an online tool. While doing this, ten people will have since received this print screen and will just click “Share”.
Print screens in North Macedonia have also recently been used to spread untrue information about the current dispute between North Macedonia and its neighbour, Bulgaria, which has refused to allow Skopje to start EU accession talks.
Some of these posts present Bulgaria’s demands as something that North Macedonia already accepted.
Another technique used to avoid or baffle filters is mixing Cyrillic and Latin letters that are identical in meaning or form, like the letters a, e, n, x, u, j, s, as well as some others.
When a social media user complains that a post has been removed from their profile, in some cases, another user will advise them next time to mix up the letters, making it harder to detect problematic content.
Some people spread fake news because they believe in it and think they are contributing. Photo: Pixabay
Ideological foot-soldiers do the hard work
But why would anyone advise others on how to make it harder to for social networks to detect their problematic content.
Checking some of the profiles that publish and spread misinformation reveals that, besides the usual suspicious suspects – like thematic profiles with false names that only publish information from one or more sources, or people who are part of formal or informal organizations and spread their ideology – a large number of users have no known connection to disinformation networks.
Most are ordinary people who do not hide their identities, publish photos of family trips, but also from time to time share some “undiscovered truth” about the coronavirus or a “child abuse plot” – wedged between lunch recipes and pictures of walks in parks.
Fact-checkers and communication technology experts agree that disseminating misinformation is a highly organised activity, often done with a malicious intent – but also that many people share such content without hidden motives. They clearly feel a responsibility to be “on the right side”.
“Some people spread fake news because they believe in it and think that by doing so they are contributing to some kind of fight for the truth to come to light,” Kordalov explains.
This makes the fight against misinformation even more difficult, because while organised networks create and spread false news at the top, most of the work of dissemination is done by individuals and micro-communities that have no connection to them, or even between each other.
“All conspiracy theories are just pieces of the master theory that says that certain elites rule the world. The more somebody believes in that, the more likely he or she would read and share content supporting this theory,” Aleksoska notes.
However, there are some solutions. Algorithms, according to Kordalov, can be reprogrammed to recognise new forms of false news. No final answer can be found to misinformation, he admits, but the two sides constantly compete and the side that invests most effort and resources will lead in the end.
Technological competition, however, is not enough if it is not matched by stronger institutional action, because creating mistrust in institutions is one of the main goals of disinformation campaigns.
Kordalov says it is not enough for the PR services of institutions just to issue announcements rebutting fake news related to their work each time they spot it. They must be actively involved in a two-way communication and react to false news quickly.
“This is often called ‘damage control’ but this is not the point. Their [institutions’] job is to serve the citizens, and providing real information is part of that service,” he says.
One way for institutions to protect public trust in them is to provide high quality services, he adds. If they work well, and if citizens feel satisfied with them, it will be harder for disinformation to hurt them.
In late March, with Albania in full lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19, an Italian pharmacist and self-proclaimed ‘doctor of nanopathology’ called Stefano Montanari gave an interview to a YouTube channel in which he likened the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 to the common flu.
The virus, said Montanari, “in most cases can be cured by the body so there is no need for the extreme measures imposed by governments across the world.”
Seventy-one year-old Montanari does not represent any scientific body. Nor is he a doctor. Newsguard, which rates website credibility, says his personal site has published “false and unsubstantiated claims” about health, including the coronavirus pandemic, while the YouTube channel he spoke to, Byoblu, has also been accused of peddling fake information.
Yet the March interview was an instant hit among Albanian-language media, his comments among the most widely distributed at the time, according to a BIRN analysis of article impact via social media, particularly Facebook.
But his were not the only debunked theories to go viral and which, coupled with the media’s own obsession with ‘clicks’ and the shortcomings of the government’s communications strategy, have fuelled the spread of conspiracy theories in Albania, experts say.
“People that believe that Covid-19 doesn’t exist or other conspiracy theories trust Montanari,” said Camilla Vagnozzi, editor-in-chief of Facta, an Italian fact-checking project established in March this year.
“Looking at the spread that his opinion had during the past months, I sadly say that the majority of people believed that he was saying something true and giving information that others want to give,” Vagnozzi told BIRN.
Montanari denial
Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Markus Winkler
Using UK-based BuzzSumo, an analytical search tool, BIRN identified news articles concerning COVID-19 that triggered the most social media engagement and published by the 20 biggest media outlets in Albania between January and October this year.
During the period monitored, Albanian media outlets distributed some 149,543 articles on COVID-19 on Facebook, triggering some 4.89 million engagements, including clicks, likes and other reactions.
The top 20 articles generated 93,711 reactions or shares. By comparison, the top 20 ‘fake’ or misleading articles, identified as such by fact-checking organisations or international institutions such as the European Union, generated 68,267 reactions or shares, so just 28 per cent fewer.
Yet a single news item published by the website GazetaKorrekte.com, and which references Montanari’s statements, alone elicited some 8,602 reactions.
Of the top 20 fake or misleading articles, five cited comments made by Montanari to Byoblu between March 14 and 17, eliciting a total of 27,365 reactions.
Neither Facebook nor Byoblu responded to requests for comment for this story. While Facebook has taken steps to identify false news through third-party fact-checking organisations, it is unclear whether such efforts include Albanian-language output.
Montanari, a pharmacist who runs a private diagnostics laboratory in Bologna, northern Italy, denied being the source of fake news.
“Can you identify any interest on me to distribute ‘fake news’?” he said in an emailed response in English to BIRN questions. Asked about YouTube’s removal of his statements to Byoblu, he replied, “They are obviously scared.”
People ‘don’t know what to believe’
Hospital workers transport face masks to the infection section at the main hospital in Tirana, Albania, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/Malton Dibra
Byoblu.com is a video-blogging site published by Claudio Messora, a former communications consultant for Italy’s anti-establishment 5Star Movement, currently part of the Italian government.
According to NewsGuard, Byoblu “repeatedly publishes false content, does not gather and present information responsibly, and does not avoid the use of deceptive headlines.” It cites the March 2020 interviews with Montanari in which he describes COVID-19 mortality as so low it is “probably even nonexistent” and says the concept of herd immunity is “a scam”.
There have been more than 38,800 COVID-related deaths in Italy since the coronavirus swept through northern Italy as its first foothold in Europe, including some 900 per day at the height of the spring outbreak. More than 1.2 million people have died worldwide.
Vagnozzi of Facta criticised the role of social networks in providing a platform not just for Montanari but for others in Italy such as Roberto Petrella. Petrella, a doctor, posted a video to Facebook in August in which he claims that COVID-19 is in fact manmade and part of a plot to reduce the world’s population. The video had been viewed more than 1.3 million times as of September 10, according to Facta.
“It doesn’t happen only with medical issues, is a phenomena that we already know also for other topics such as 5G technology or [US Microsoft founder and billionaire philanthropist] Bill Gates conspiracy theories,” said Vagnozzi.
“With Covid-19 pandemic the difference is that people are scared and panicked because they understand that we are living in a strange and out of our control situation and people often have no idea on what to believe.”
Social media giants like Facebook are trying to fight disinformation, she said, but some things are beyond their control.
“In my opinion, social media platforms are doing an honest work in fighting disinformation,”,” Vagnozzi said. “The spread of Montanari fake news is not only related to Facebook and Youtube efforts to fight disinformation, it is related with the ability of people to understand what can be true and what is false.”
Storm over Irish professor’s YouTube claims
Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/dole777
It’s not only Montanari’s views that have made a splash in Albanian-language media.
In an article published in April on the Albanian news portal Opinion.al, a man named Rashid Buttar, described as a graduate in biology and theology from Washington University and a practitioner of alternative medicine, claimed that the novel coronavirus was in fact created by US immunologist Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as a combination of the HIV virus that causes Aids and the respiratory virus MERS.
The article had a total of 3,378 Facebook engagements, including 602 shares and 567 comments.
Another article, published on May 11 by Standard.al cites statements made on YouTube by Professor Dolores Cahill of University College Dublin, leader of the right-wing eurosceptic Irish Freedom Party and who accused politicians and the media of using the pandemic as a “propaganda tool to try and take away rights from people and to make them more sick and to force vaccinations on us.”
The headline of the article reads: “British doctor makes surprising statement: In Italy are dying those who received flu vaccine. COVID-19 is not that dangerous.” The article had a total of 4,381 Facebook engagements, including 756 shares and 300 comments.
The fact-checking service Health Feedback classified Cahill’s statements as “based on inaccurate and misleading information”. Facebook and Youtube deleted the video as fake news.
After 133 medical students urged Cahill’s employer, University College Dublin, to take action, the university issued a statement in June saying the views she expressed “do not reflect the position of the school, college, institute or university.”
Trust in conspiracy theories
A protest in Tirana against compulsory COVID-19 vaccinations, June 2, 2020. Photo: Nensi Bogdani
Research suggests Albania represents fertile ground for conspiracy theories.
According to a survey published on October 10 by the Institute for Development Research and Alternatives, IDRA, 70 per cent of respondents said they believed COVID-19 was created in a laboratory in China.
Some 65 per cent expressed the belief that the virus had been created by people in power or by pharmaceutical companies for money and power.
A third of respondents said they believed in the theory that 5G mobile networks had a role in the rapid spread of the virus while 29 per cent said vaccines against it would be used to install microchips to track people.
Lamenting the influence of disinformation, Denisa Canameti, editor in chief of the Albanian newspaper Shëndet+, told BIRN:
“Due to this, we are in a position where a part of the population doesn’t believe that COVID exists and another part refuses healthcare offered by Albanian hospitals while others believe that the vaccine will be used to install chips. There are others who doesn’t believe statistical reports about the disease or do not trust WHO [World Health Organisation] policies.”
While most of the fake news published in Albanian media since the start of the pandemic has been translated from foreign sources, some have been homegrown.
One that made a commotion on Facebook concerned a claim made by a Tirana engineer called Sazan Guri that during the lockdown period a funeral company was providing its services for free, and even offering cash payments, to families who agreed to register the deaths of their loved ones as caused by COVID-19. An article published on the online portal of Fax TV on Guri’s claims alone received 2,300 engagements on Facebook, including 242 shares and 400 comments.
Contacted by BIRN, Guri stood by his statement.
“The whole COVID is fake news,” he said. “One or two per cent it exists, 98 per cent is faked by doctors and by the media reporting on it, forcing man to die from the fear of the fear.”
Klodiana Kapo, executive director of Albanian fact-checker Faktoje, state bodies in Albania share part of the blame for the poor quality of information reaching the public.
“What we have seen during this period is a total lack of transparency by the Ministry of Health and all these healthcare institutions, creating a situation in which news is only what is produced by the Ministry which in the meantime made it impossible to verify anything,” Kapo said.
“The pandemic has been accompanied by an increase in pressure by the Ministry of Health and the government to control even further the flow of information.”
Canameti of Shëndet+ agreed that health authorities had failed “to clearly articulate” information concerning the pandemic, but said media too remained hooked on social media impact.
“Even in this grave situation, we were not spared the mania of seeking attention and clicks,” she said.
Elena used to dream that one day she would head her own marketing agency.
She has been in marketing for five years and works for one of the ten biggest marketing agencies in North Macedonia, based in the capital Skopje. She started out as an account manager, working with small clients.
Elena, who describes herself as vibrant and ambitious, made quick progress after joining the agency and was assigned to a team working for bigger clients. She was given more responsibilities and went on training courses and attended lectures and conferences around Europe to acquire more skills so that one day she could move across to the creative side of the business.
But then the COVID-19 pandemic slashed the company’s revenues and transformed her job into something completely different. Since May this year, she has been reassigned to translating stories from English and Serbian media into Macedonian, and from Serbian into English, adjusting the content to create short, sensationalist articles with headlines that will catch a reader’s eye imediately – clickbait.
“I used to dream of one day creating a campaign for [US fashion designer] Marc Jacobs, now I just translate articles from dawn until dusk,” said Elena. “My boss lady says it’s the same thing, it’s just being a content writer – but is it?”
COVID-19 conspiracies shared on a website named Torix.info that publishes in the Croatian language. The website is part of the interests Aleksandar Filipovski shared on his Facebook page along with other similar websites, such as the currently inactive, German-language Newcome.net and the Serbian language BalkanEkspres.com. Screenshot: Saska Cvetkovska
The articles that are created at the marketing agency where Elena works end up being published on various websites with the aim of generating revenue from Google Ads, as well as being posted to a range of Facebook groups to drive click-throughs. BIRN is not naming the company in order to protect the anonymity of Elena, which is not her real name.
Elena showed BIRN her corporate and private emails dating from May 21 to October 2.
“Just take a look at one day in the office. Total brainwashing bullshit,” she said as she showed hundreds of emails sent to the 18 employees who survived staff cutbacks in July and have now been reassigned to work on the clickbait content, which they call “the dirty laundry”.
Asked to explain why they call it that, Elena responded sharply: “As a professional I find there are no ethics in what we are doing. No professional challenge, nor any excitement. I just need the job desperately,” she said.
“As a feminist and bisexual, I do not feel comfortable creating clickbait posts for articles like ‘You have no idea what she did to her boyfriend when she found out he was gay. Now he is paying the price before God,’” she explained.
She said the agency’s staff were shocked that the company’s director was willing to get involved in clickbait publishing. They have never told been the identity of the client or clients who are paying for the stories they produce, and the exact relationship between the agency and the websites that publish the articles is unclear.
According to Elena, the director simply told them: “For now, we will have to adapt. This what makes money, I didn’t invent it, but there are people with huge businesses that work exclusively with Google ads. This is the reality now.”
Back in 2016, world media reported how more than 100 websites had been set up in North Macedonia to target US readers ahead of that year’s presidential elections, most of them pumping out bogus stories aimed as boosting Donald Trump’s candidacy. Amazement was expressed at how young Macedonians, thousands of kilometres away from the US, were making money out of fake news about the American elections.
Four years later, some clickbait sites based in North Macedonia are still pumping out pro-Trump stories. But now entrepreneurs and companies with no political agenda have got involved, seeing an opportunity to earn easy money by mass-producing sensationalist content about the US elections and COVID-19 that will generate revenue from Google Ads.
BIRN spoke to four marketing agencies in North Macedonia that are now involved in creating clickbait content for international clients; two of them also create articles for domestic websites. With the country’s advertising and marketing business hit hard by the pandemic, they see it as one of the only ways to stay in business.
US elections change the agenda
US President Donald J. Trump participates in a ‘Make America Great Again Victory Rally’ campaign event at the Richard B. Russell Airport in Rome, Georgia, USA, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/BRANDEN CAMP
Around 60 per cent of the content created by the agency where Elena works was clickbait material about COVID-19 – emotional stories about survivors, poignant statements from doctors in hospitals, what world leaders have said on social media, what celebrities do or don’t do to protect themselves from the coronavirus, plus conspiracy theories and articles about famous people who think that COVID-19 doesn’t exist. Other topics included politics, health and beauty.
The stories, mostly translated from Serbian or Croatian tabloids’ websites, were generally presented with misleading headlines written in capital letters: “This is how the client wants it, our boss just says,” Elena explained.
On September 6, an email from the director set out a new priority for the agency’s employees: the mass production of clickbait articles about Donald Trump.
“Guys, as you know the US elections are coming. We have follow the trends and increase advertisements on Google Ads. That is what everyone is reading now. Trump, Trump, Trump, just follow that and US domestic policy,” the email said.
On October 6, another email from the director on October 2: “Please follow Donald Trump’s Twitter, too. Especially now he has COVID-19. The client wants headlines adapted from the videos he shares. Try to get hold of tweets that are crazier, or the ones in which he mocks the liberals, i.e. his opponents,” it said.
Elena noted that the clients are not interested in having just any story on Trump, but prefer positive content. She and her co-workers were introduced to at least 20 Facebook groups with names like Trump for USA or Conservatives for Trump, which they were supposed to use as sources of content.
They were told they could use anything as source material for a clickbait article, even a meme. They were asked to deliver “at least 30 articles per day”, she said.
Elena said she saw at least five headlines she personally created were picked up by hundreds of other media outlets. She said she found the whole clickbait phenomenon disturbing.
“As a reader, I would not want the media and journalists to work like this,” she said. “As a marketing person, I never dreamed that we would do this. As a citizen, honestly, I find this a dangerous trend. This is becoming a big industry.”
Trump and the North Macedonian connection
The moto of TILT news is “conservatives uncensored”. Screenshot: Saska Cvetkovska
Among the suggestions that Elena and her colleagues were given for sources of content was a website named TiLT News, whose slogan is “Unfiltered Conservatism”. Her boss described it as a “great source, according to the client, aggregating the most important tweets and Facebook posts from US President Donald Trump”.
Some TiLT News headlines also took readers through to well-known US right-wing and pro-Trump sites like Breitbart News.
BIRN’s efforts to find out who is behind TiLT News led back to the notorious websites that operated out of the North Macedonian towns of Veles and Kumanovo during the 2016 US presidential elections, with the aim of affecting the outcome by targeting American readers with positive news about Trump and attacks on his opponent Hillary Clinton.
More than 100 websites with names like DonaldTrumpNews.co and USADailyPolitics.com were launched by a North Macedonian lawyer who was working with US conservative partners.
There is no data about the owner of TiLT News on the site due to protected anonymity, which can be bought for $15 a year from the Internet domain registrar and web hosting company GoDaddy. However, BIRN found that an email address that was used to register TiLT News, tamiterusa@hotmail.com, was also used to register some of the pro-Trump conservative clickbait websites in North Macedonia that were operating in 2016.
One of those involved was Aleksandar Filipovski, who in 2016 worked on producing pro-Trump articles on behalf of the US conservative lobby.
Links to Filipovski’s websites that were registered in 2015 and 2016 have since been removed from Facebook and Twitter. But his network of false Facebook accounts still exists, using PhotoShopped profile pictures that are hard to identify as modified fakes.
These fake accounts share TiLT News items to hundreds of US conservative groups’ Facebook pages, as well as to military veterans’ groups and other pro-Trump groups.
How the clickbait business works
In 2016, TiLT news published fake news claiming that former US President Barak Obama is an alien. At the time, the website was named the Tamiterusa blog. If you google TiLT news, you will only get results for Tamiterusa, most of which dates back to before the 2016 presidential elections. Screenshot: Saska Cvetkovska
To explain the clickbait business model, BIRN asked Aleksandar Velkovski, a 28-year-old bank official from Skopje who earns money on the side by running five different websites, three in English and two in Macedonian.
Velkovski said that after setting up their websites and paying the fee to keep their ownership anonymous, clickbait entrepreneurs need to acquire more than 30 fake Facebook profiles that they can use to promote their articles.
“Then [get the fake profiles to] join as many Facebook groups as possible because you’re not a real news brand, no one knows you and you just need the clicks so that Google Ads can work for you,” he said.
Silvi Trajanovska was an active profile in 2016. She has Macedonian friends, some of whom are fake profiles, but some are real. BIRN tracked her sharing and liking TiLT news, and became members in groups that share this and other conservative content but were not able to confirm whether this profile is real or not. Screenshot: Saska Cvetkovska
The fake profiles then post the clickbait articles in the Facebook groups. “From a group of 150,000 members, at least 30 per cent will click [on a clickbait link]. If the topic is currently ‘hot’, like the US elections or COVID, you can get around $100 to $300 out of one article from Google Ads,” he continued.
Velkovski doesn’t produce content himself, but orders it from various suppliers.
“I can pay a content provider for English news like $1,000 per month, and on top of that I have two more people from Skopje who I’m paying 400 euros each, and there is money left over for me as well. I’m not going to tell you exactly how much, but a bit more than double the costs.”
Silvi Trajanovska in one of the groups sharing TiLT news and other conservative news content. Screenshot: Saska Cvetkovska
Rosana Aleksovska, the director of F2N2, a fact-checking service that also investigates disinformation narratives, said that clickbait entrepreneurs are now not only promoting their sites using networks of fake profiles on Facebook and Twitter, but also now increasingly on Instagram and Telegram. “The bigger your social media platforms are, the bigger your earnings,” she said.
When it comes to disinformation campaigns, Aleksovska suggested that “most of this type of content is linked to conservative and extreme-right politics and opinions”. Some sites are ideologically-driven, some have murky connections to Russia. But other sites aren’t concerned about the politics of their content, she noted: “This is about money now, this has truly become a business.”
North Macedonia’s Media Ethics Council, an independent body, has been trying to address the issues of disinformation and political propaganda in media as well as pushing for transparency in media ownership. It runs the media transparency registry, where media ownership is listed, although disclosure is not compulsory under the law.
The council says it sometimes receives more than 100 complaints from the public each month.
“Most of the cases we receive are related to violations of Article 1 of the Code of Journalists, which refers to the publication of accurate and verified information, and in 39 per cent of reported cases this is the problem, while violations of Article 8 of the Code of Journalists, which refers to sensationalist information, were found in 35 per cent of the reported cases,” explained Katarina Sinadinovska, the president of the council.
‘Fake news’ and sensationalist stories are genuine worries for the public, Sinadinovska said: “You have a sea of unverified information, full of sensationalism, and we are not sure who makes the news anymore,” she pointed out.
Clickbait journalism as a career option
Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Nick Morrison
Lila Karjlieva, a young Macedonian journalist, until recently worked for a website in the capital Skopje that pumps out clickbait articles. When she went for the interview, she was not expecting her first job in journalism to be the greatest in North Macedonia, but what she was told by her prospective employer surprised her.
“‘You’re young and there’s plenty of time for real journalism; this is content creation, a different kind of journalism’ – this is what Filip told me when I asked why we were working from home. You know, I was expecting a real newsroom,” Karjlieva recalled. “I had been following that website for about four years, and I thought real reporters worked there.”
The three owners of the site all have day jobs: one runs his own business selling hot dogs in the best-known mall in Skopje, another one owns a small construction company and the third one is a public servant, running social media for the director of Skopje’s state-owned water supply company.
They also run two other websites that aim to churn out as much content as possible, because the more articles they publish, the more the potential revenue from Google Ads.
“We were given sources, mostly Serbian tabloids like Kurir, Informer, Blic and others, and our job was to make the articles seem different than they were [on the newspaper websites] and put clickbait headlines on them,” Karjlievasaid. “We had a quota, like 50 articles in an eight-hour period, but it was so easy.”
In the current media environment in North Macedonia, ‘real’ jobs are almost impossible to find, and producing clickbait content is one of the few options for young journalists, she explained.
“If you are looking for a job in media, it is more likely for a young person like me to choose to work for a website like this one for six hours a day and a 450-to-500-euro fee. Working from home and just doing nothing but copy-pasting and adjusting,” she said.
“The alternative is to find jobs that are not really available in real media like TV stations or NGOs. I said to myself: ‘Why not?’ And these days I can say that many of my peers do not feel this is wrong, they want to be like my owners.”
She said she has seen how easy it can to make money from clickbait sites: “If I had been ambitious about this, I swear to you that in two years from now I could have been running 15 websites like this, employing five people and earning as much as any big-shot, politically-connected Balkan editor-in-chief,” she declared.
It is already hard to attract young people to work in the media in North Macedonia because it’s such a politically-dominated environment, and the rise of the clickbait industry could make the problem worse, experts believe.
Maja Jovanovska, a member of North Macedonia’s Association of Journalists who works on the issue of the lack of young reporters in the country’s media, said that there are more than 100 websites in the country operating on the clickbait model – purely led by Google Ads’ algorithms, with no editorial ethics or standards.
“People’s access to genuine information is being limited,” said Jovanovska. “This is how we influence people’s lives, by giving them poor-quality information.”
Conspiracy theories become profitable
Karatseva left the website two months ago, not long after the owners announced an editorial shift towards political and coronavirus-related news.
“They gave us a list of sources, mostly very questionable sources, from Russia and Serbia, and the US and Croatia as well,” she recalled.
“Domestic news was also included, we were told that we should do news not just about every comment that the minister of health made on live TV or on Twitter or Facebook or in the press, but also even from the comments made about him. That attracts readers, the management said.”
She showed BIRN some of the articles that the site has been publishing recently – some of them praising the authorities’ COVID-19 policies, others condemning them; some of them advocating the idea of protecting oneself from the virus, others pushing conspiracy theories about it.
Indeed, conspiracy theories have become profitable online content in the age of the coronavirus.
Vasko, Meglen, and Vera are all 21-year-old students from Skopje and their job is to translate conspiracy theories from YouTube or other video platforms. BIRN is not naming the company in order to protect their anonymity.
At the company where they work, the employees are divided into two teams: one team of makes transcripts of conspiracy videos from YouTube, while the second team picks up news ideas from the videos and writes short articles or social media posts promoting the conspiracy theory.
“The stories are [about the] ‘deep state’ – anti-liberal, anti-government no matter where, anti-NGO, anti-international institutions like the IMF, the UN, the EU, NATO and, most recently, mostly COVID-does-not-exist conspiracies,” Vasko explained.
He said he found the job four years ago through adverts on LinkedIn and Freelancer.com seeking content writers. Several of his friends, mostly students, also signed up.
“I can earn like $1,500 for like nothing, no brain involved. But I study philosophy and there is a pattern in what we translate. We do not know what the company does this for, but during the COVID-19 crisis I’ve noticed some of the headlines I personally created in some shitty English-language media,” he said.
The company is registered outside North Macedonia and creates clickbait content to order, mostly for right-wing libertarian clients.
“Sorry about this,” he said, “but we’re doing it for the money.”
Saska Cvetkovska is an investigative reporter and media freedom activist. She is a co-founder of Investigative Reporting Lab – Macedonia, an OCCRP member center that fights disinformation with investigative reporting that uses interdisciplinary approaches, including technology and academic research. She serves at the Board of Directors of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting project. She was a lead reporter on investigstive project Spooks and Spin — Information Wars in the Balkans, about how Macedonia became a haven for propaganda. Saska has won more than ten domestic and international journalism awards. In 2018 she was elected by Macedonian journalists to represent them on the board of directors of the Association of Journalists of Macedonia, an organization that works to improve working conditions for reporters in the country.
This article has been produced as part of the Resonant Voices Initiative in the EU, funded by the European Union’s Internal Security Fund – Police. The content of this story is the sole responsibility of BIRN. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.
The coronavirus pandemic has had a chilling effect on people’s right to information in Central and Southeast Europe, with many countries adopting legal measures which temporarily altered or even suspended obligations regarding the public’s right to information.
Thankfully, many of these measures have since lapsed with the end of the states of emergency and lockdowns, though there are other pieces of legislation in the works that could hinder people’s right to information.
On the annual International Day for Universal Access to Information, BIRN has released data showing dramatic drops in responses to freedom of information (FOI) requests by official bodies, either in time or in their entirety. BIRN keeps track of its FOI requests and produces reports on the topic, because the information gleaned from these requests enables it to produce investigative pieces and expose wrongdoing by governments, companies and powerful individuals.
“In a world where COVID-19 has caused chaos and complexity, access to reliable and verified information is more important than ever… As these last few months have shown, public health requires transparency – whether this means statistics on the scale of the pandemic, or data on public spending. Access to accurate and trustworthy information ensures accountability for actions undertaken in response to the challenges caused by the virus, as the global community works to ‘build back better’,” Audrey Azoulay, director-general of UNESCO, wrote on the occasion of the International Day for Universal Access to Information.
Since the beginning of the year, the data shows that BIRN journalists have sent at least 366 FOI requests to various public institutions in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Turkey. So far, just 123 requests, or 33.6 per cent, have been answered, either fully or partially, while the remainder are either rejected or still not answered.
By comparison, between January 2017 and June 2019, BIRN journalists submitted 854 official requests to access public documents in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia, with slightly under half (408) approved; 224 were partially approved, meaning the institutions provided only technical information; and 221 requests were either rejected or no answer at all was received, despite repeated follow-ups from the journalists.
At the time, BIRN concluded that while FOI laws in the region are among the most liberal in Europe on paper, implementation of these laws is well below European standards – a situation that has deteriorated with the spread of the pandemic.
Public institutions that so far have been most likely to answer FOI requests are the Trade Ministry and prosecutors’ offices (Serbia), the Judicial Council (North Macedonia), the Kosovo Judicial Council and local municipalities (Kosovo).
BIRN also tests the transparency of public institutions by analysing their compliance with the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from national and subnational governments to promote open government, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance. So far, four Balkan states have joined the OGP: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Serbia.
Some of the commitments each state proposed in their Action Plans are related to: open data, anti-corruption, public procurement, developing e-governance, adopting laws to support transparency of public institutions etc. But despite their promise to be more transparent and open, these countries are still struggling to meet the commitments.
Albania, the oldest OGP member since 2011, has been shifting the OGP leadership from one institution to another, thus failing to fully implement its own commitments: fiscal transparency, public services, access to information, public administration and anti-corruption.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, which joined OGP in 2014, has not moved a step forward in fulfilling the commitments. Independent published reports note no improvement.
Montenegro, which joined in 2012, is still facing difficulties on internal leadership to deal with OGP and track the developments of the already committed institutions.
Serbia, which joined the partnership in 2013, has the highest number of set commitments. From a total of 14, it failed to develop an IT system to support e-governance, and failed to implement proposed amendments to the laws that were supposed to improve governmental transparency.
All four countries have failed in becoming more transparent and digitally accessible. Publishing the latest updates on their websites, such as financial reports, ministry meetings minutes, or other current and important public documents, seems like too long a process to be ever fully implemented.
COVID measures
Citing the fight against COVID-19, authorities in a number of Central and Southeast European countries extended the amount of time that state bodies had to respond to FOI requests, which media watchdogs warned at the time was part of a worrying crackdown on press freedom since the onset of the pandemic.
“We are concerned that in some cases, the suspension or delay of FOI deadlines is being used to hinder media access to information and thereby shield the government from domestic scrutiny or criticism over its handling of the outbreak,” warned Scott Griffen, deputy director of the International Press Institute (IPI).
Among those countries extending and suspending deadlines for FOI requests were Bulgaria, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia, while Poland passed a law suspending the activity of courts that would rule on issues related to FOI requests.
Most of these laws have since been revoked as the states of emergency and lockdown ended, however experts are warning about other legislation in the pipeline that could have a similar detrimental effect on the right to information.
In Poland, for example, legislation has been proposed by MPs from the ruling party that would exempt officials from punishment for breaking the law if they did so as part of efforts to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.
The World Health Organization advises that, instead of absolving of liability, it is important to, among other things, produce conditions for better public oversight of the various public decisions made during the pandemic.
“This… recommendation could be implemented by facilitating access to public information via digitising, obliging institutions to proactively publish information online, shortening dates for information access etc… Yet the current government is not making access to public information easier, but complicating it further on the pretext of battling the pandemic,” Grzegorz Makowski, an expert at the Batory Foundation’s ideaForum, wrote.
In Montenegro, the government has been criticised for pressing ahead during the pandemic with proposed amendments to the Montenegrin Law on Free Access to Information that have raised serious concern among experts, who say that the majority of the proposed changes would have a negative effect and take Montenegro further away from international transparency standards.
Montenegro’s Deputy Ombudsperson, Nerma Dobradzic, on Friday said police had violated the privacy rights of Democratic Front MP Nebojsa Medojevic and his wife Marina when they posted a video on Twitter of them being moved to quarantine.
The police directorate posted the video on March 17, which was then aired on the country’s public broadcaster, RTCG.
Deputy Ombudsperson Dobradzic said the police had failed to provide any objective reason that justified publication of the video. “Publishing a video or delivering it to the media without consent is an interference with the right to respect of a private life,” Dobradzic said.
Police defended their action, saying the event was filmed in a public space and that the faces in the video were kept blurred in order to protect the privacy of Medojevic and his wife.
But the Deputy Ombudsperson noted that the Police Directorate published Medojevic’s and his wife’s names in full in a press release, which they did not do when Navy chief Vesko Tomanovic, the mayor the resort of Tivat, Sinisa Kusovac, and an athlete, Srdjan Mrvaljevic, violated their self-isolation health measures.
The Ombudsman’s office has intervened before on complaints related to the pandemic. On April 1, Ombudsperson Sinisa Bjekovic noted that various citizens were complaining about the constitutionality and legality of the government implemented health measures.
On July 23, the Constitutional Court annulled a government decision to publish the names of citizens ordered to self-isolate during the coronavirus, though it did not rule that the government violated the human rights of citizens in doing so.
The government published the names on March 21 despite warnings from opposition parties and civic society organisations that it risked violating constitutionally guaranteed human rights.
The government said it had a right to publish the names because some citizens were not respecting self-isolation obligations. It also said it had approval for its actions from the Agency for Personal Data Protection.
It stressed that the security forces could not control every citizen who should be in self-isolation, adding that anyone who failed to self-isolate posed a threat to the entire community.
The Democratic Front is a constituent part of the For the Future of Montenegro coalition which, alongside two other coalitions, Peace is Our Nation and Black on White, narrowly won parliamentary elections held on August 30, ending the decades-long rule of the Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS.
Russian disinformation in the Western Balkans and ‘Eastern Partnership’ countries has taken “a new turn” with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, portraying the European Union as overwhelmed and unable to support its neighbours, Romanian expert Nicolae Tibrigan told BIRN in an interview.
Tibrigan, a researcher at the Bucharest-based Laboratory for the Analysis of Informational Warfare and Strategic Communication, LARICS, said Russian anti-Western propaganda had fuelled conspiracy theories about the origins of the novel coronavirus and criticism of the EU’s efforts to support the countries of the Western Balkans and six former Soviet republics in the so-called Eastern Partnership.
“One of the main goals of pro-Kremlin disinformation in the two regions is to create and deepen mistrust between the EU and its partners,” Tibrigan told BIRN in an email interview.
“In the context of the health crisis, these disinformation efforts are taking a new turn, in which the EU is systematically portrayed as overwhelmed by the situation and unable to respond to the needs and calls of its eastern neighbours.”
Russia trying to undermine EU via Balkans
Giving the example of a report by Russian state-controlled agency Sputnik from January suggesting the virus originated in a NATO or US laboratory, Tibrigan said that “online sources with ‘alternative content’ and social networks propagated these narratives as indisputable facts, each time adapting the message to the internal context of each state.”
“Local actors were encouraged by the pro-Kremlin media to multiply the message to contribute to a real regional campaign of misinformation, propaganda and spread of conspiracy theories on the health crisis: secret laboratories explain coronavirus outbreaks, while outbreaks of coronavirus would automatically prove the existence of secret laboratories.”
Supporters of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic wave flags and show a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin during the ‘Future of Serbia’ campaign rally in Belgrade, Serbia, April 19, 2019. Photo: EPA/Andrej Cukic
In the Western Balkans, he said, the COVID-19 pandemic was “artificially linked to another hypothesis – that the EU would ‘turn its back’ on the Western Balkans, as it has done with other European countries.”
Tibrigan said Russia sees the Western Balkans as “a vulnerable periphery of Europe,” one which presents “an opportunity to undermine the EU and NATO by exploiting local vulnerabilities.”
Sputnik’s Serbian-language outlet, based in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, is the main source of Russian disinformation in the Balkan region, Tibrigan told BIRN, while citing other outlets such as Russia Beyond the Headlines, which translates into Serbian and Macedonian, the newspaper Argumenti i Fakti [Arguments and Facts] and the ‘Ruska Rec’ newspaper supplement.
He said there was a “lack of political will” in the Western Balkans to combat Russian disinformation, while Serbia and North Macedonia have become not just consumers but “exporters” of Russian propaganda.
Tip of the iceberg
In the Eastern Partnership states – Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Azerbaijan and Armenia – Russian propaganda is more direct, Tibrigan said and does not use one particular state as a platform as Serbia is used in the Western Balkans.
Moldovan President Igor Dodon (L) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) take part in the flower-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow, Russia, June 24, 2020. Photo: EPA/GRIGORY SYSOEV
Disinformation has become an essential tool in trying to thwart the European path of these states, where Russian is widely spoken or understood, he said, alongside direct military intervention and the perpetuation of frozen conflicts.
“These propaganda narratives manage to penetrate the information ecosystems of the EaP [Eastern Partnership] states, with the public being ‘warned’ about the ‘lack of sustainability and stability’ of their Western partners,” said Tibrigan.
In Moldova, he said, the government and president actively disseminate pro-Kremlin propaganda, while authorities have not taken any measures to limit the influence of Russian-language social networks.
Notably during the pandemic, the Moldovan Orthodox Church, canonically subordinate to the Russian Patriarchy, has echoed the main Russian propaganda themes.
The Kremlin has earmarked 1.3 billion euros for media spending in 2020 is 1.3 billion euros, compared to the shoestring budget of the EU’s anti-propaganda unit, East Stratcom, of five million euros.
Of the Russian 1.3 billion, 325 million will go to state-controlled Russia Today, which broadcasts in roughly 100 countries around the world, Tibrigan said.
“And that’s just the visible part of the iceberg, given that we can’t estimate the exact value of the propaganda operations carried out by proxies or secret service entities.”
Cash may still be king in the Balkans, but growth in online payments – particularly in the era of COVID-19 – is fuelling optimism among those in the region pressing the case for cryptocurrency.
In the countries of the former Yugoslavia, many remember the hyperinflation of the 1990s and trust in traditional financial institutions is still in short supply, giving cryptocurrency a potential edge.
“The ability of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin to be censorship resistant is seen as a great advantage,” said Arvin Kamberi, vice president of the Bitcoin Association of Serbia.
“While cash is still king in this area, we are also witnessing that the number of online payments is growing – especially pushed by the current COVID-19 developments.”
According to Kamberi, while cryptocurrency mining remains one of the main activities for users in the region, thanks mostly to the low cost electricity, growth of a cryptoasset industry and IT companies working in this field could provide a welcome fillip to economies across the region.
“Apart from cryptocurrency, the new cryptoasset industry will offer a variety of financial, legal or other services based on decentralised solutions,” Kamberi told BIRN.
“Serbia is preparing the set of regulations in order to address this issue, and this can be a big push forward to a financial industry 2.0, and can give the Balkans a chance to play a much bigger role in this development.”
Laying the foundation
Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Austin Distel
Colibra, a Bulgarian startup, recently launched an option for travellers by which they can receive compensation for flight delays in Bitcoin.
In the Croatian town of Sveta Nedelja just west of the capital Zagreb, local authorities have introduced a service which enables shops and local institutions to accept payment in cryptocurrencies, while on the coast, Telos, one of the world’s most active blockchain platforms, together with the Croatia-based no-code DApp development platform Katalyo, will tokenise real estate assets worth approximately 30 million euros.
The tokenisation process, which basically turns real estate assets into digital assets, means that token holders will receive dividends in the form of fiat-based stable coins, generated from rental revenue.
“We are at the dawn of tokenisation revolutionising the real estate industry,” said Douglas Horn, Chief Architect of the Telos Blockchain.
“Telos has been building toolsets to make it easier for developers to create instantaneous, fee-less, transparent and governed tokenised economies as well as the adjacent tools like DeFi (Decentralised Finance), cross-chain transactions, decentralised data storage and oracles that increase their value even further,” he told BIRN.
Ivica Ljubicic, co-founder of Katalyo, said: “With Telos, we have the tools we need to support a sophisticated platform, which helps us welcome investors to the Croatian real estate market.”
Industry insiders say these and similar examples across the region mean that the potential for the development and implementation of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology is here to stay. But they can face hurdles.
“A lot of projects aimed to tokenise real estate for years and have failed because of the same reason – they were unable to gather enough properties,” Vlaho Hrdalo, chair of the Croatian Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Association, told BIRN.
“If I were to bet on any one project succeeding, I would go for CrowdEstate by experienced startuper Srdjan Kupresanin, who just rolled-out a similar thing with cars in Austria to success.”
Need for crypto-friendly regulation
Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Dmitry Demidko
Knowledge and experience are not enough, however. Regulations are required to ease the burden on companies working in the field, experts say.
“Several companies from this area are working on top notch cryptocurrency projects: like in DeFi, second layer protocol solutions for scaling of payment networks, blockchain based protocol for tokenisation of assets, but again it is hard to keep them here,” said Kamberi.
“We would need proactive, positive regulation in order to ease the burden of such start-ups and IT companies.”
One success story that others might try to emulate is Slovenia.
“Slovenia implemented crypto friendly regulations and this boosted the industry and the use of cryptocurrencies,” said Kamberi. “The country now has more than a thousand places in which you can spend cryptocurrencies – including major retailers like ‘Tuš’ or Burger King Slovenia.”
Serbia also seems ready and willing to adopt a set of crypto-regulations which would address cryptocurrency trading.
Belgrade-based Electronic Currency District, ECD, is a Bitcoin exchange that launched in 2012. Since then, their service has evolved and also opened branches across the region, the company told BIRN.
“We have added five new cryptocurrencies, we set up a network of Crypto ATMs in Serbia, developed application for bitcoin payments and opened branches in [North] Macedonia and Montenegro,” said co-founder and CEO Aleksandar Matanovic.
Currently the greatest potential in is remittances, Matanovic told BIRN.
“Remittances are probably the biggest chance for crypto to be used as money. The Balkans is a huge remittance market and sending money internationally is both faster and cheaper if you use crypto.”
“With a supportive regulatory framework, I really believe this industry could flourish, beneffiting not only those directly involved but also society as a whole.”
Some countries playing catch-up
Unlike Slovenia, Croatia, or Bulgaria, countries like North Macedonia are lagging behind, mostly due to the lack of any regulations whatsoever. And for those in the country looking to do business in cryptocurrency, it’s not straightforward.
“Trading mainly works through several crypto exchanges, most often Binance, and there are no obstacles here. Profit and exchange in denars usually goes through intermediaries, EU or Bulgarian residents,” said Petar Grujoski, a Skopje-based cryptocurrency enthusiast.
“Until recently, Macedonian citizens were not allowed to have accounts abroad, and we still do not have PayPal and Amazon for the same reason,” Grujoski told BIRN.
Cryptocurrency mining, on the other hand, can prove highly profitable in North Macedonia, not least because of cheap electricity supplies. The same applies to the rest of the region. But sometimes, when it comes to cryptocurrency mining and the rest of the infrastructure that can support the use of this technology, there are still some doubts.
“Regarding the infrastructure, if we look at the mining industry, electricity is in abundance and still quite cheap in some areas,” Kamberi said. “But mining can be a real environmental threat and the focus should be moved away from incentivising such an industry.”
“Regarding the use and payments infrastructure, the Internet coverage is still an issue in some areas. Anyhow, the ability to access the cryptocurrency payment networks using mobile devices and 3G connection makes it easier for users even in the most remote parts of the region.”
With a full-time job and a family, Safija Vucenovic, now 67, from the central Bosnian city of Zenica, could rarely find time to commit to music and sewing – her two great passions – when she was younger.
It was only when she was pensioned and her children grew up that she started singing in a local female choir, performing solo at music events and designing her own dresses for them.
But her newfound pleasure was shaken this spring by the arrival of COVID-19, tying her to her home without social contacts or performances.
To banish the feeling of uncertainty and anxiety that overwhelmed many of her peers, she began recording herself with a smartphone while singing her favourite “sevdalinke” songs and making clothes, sharing the videos with her friends via Facebook and Viber.
“It helped me, and the others, to keep our spirits up,” Vucenovic recalls.
Even though it is not mandatory to stay inside any more, many older people still spend most of their time at home, especially since the number of COVID-19 cases began rising in early July.
People aged 65 years and older make up about 14 per cent of Bosnia’s population, according to the 2013 census, and their share in the overall population is increasing.
The UN estimates that this age group will represent more than 30 per cent of the population of Bosnia by 2060. Many seniors live on the edge of poverty and are socially excluded. Average pensions of around 200 euros a month often cannot cover even basic expenses.
Several reports, including those published by Caritas BiHand the Institution of the Human Rights Ombudsman of BiH, have noted that the lack of activities in which elderly people can take part makes them isolated and prone to mental illnesses, particularly depression.
Ever since the beginning of the pandemic, media have reported that the elderly are the most at-risk group from COVID-19, although the evidence shows that the disease can be deadly to anyone.
At the same time, regular health care services, slow and inadequate even under normal conditions, have now become almost inaccessible to many seniors now because of the special COVID-19-related working regime.
For Safija and other members of the Zenica-basedNas most (Our Bridge) association, the only way to keep up with their peers, rather than depressing news, was to turn to technology.
From their own homes, they have been engaging in collective creative work and socializing – the same as they had been doing during the gatherings held in Our Bridge’s art centre before the pandemic – but this time over the Internet.
Virus puts centre’s work on hold
The Our Bridge local association has organised artistic and cultural activities for seniors and persons with disabilities in Zenica since the beginning of 2013.
It has staged numerous arts and crafts classes, art exhibitions and music and theatre performances involving the elderly – mostly women – in order to foster their social inclusion.
While other bigger cities in Bosnia have government-supportedcentres for healthy ageing to aid the socialization of the elderly, Our Bridge’s work is mainly funded by members’ own fees and is based on the volunteer work of senior activists.
The number of its activities and its members has steadily grown in the last two years but, as the association closed in March due to the pandemic, all of its initiatives have been halted.
But, soon after the initial shock caused by the crisis, the association began organising Facebook-based creative challenges and live streams of art workshops, art classes on Viber and online art residencies for international artists.
“We wanted to stay connected and motivate each other to create arts and crafts so that we can distract ourselves from our worries,” says Zdena Saric, president of Our Bridge. “It’s been really a blessing that we have the Internet and smartphones to do so.”
Saric, a locally renowned artist and art activist helping women, seniors and persons with disabilities to overcome mental health struggles through art, began giving online painting classes via Facebook live streams in April.
Her first live-streamed video class on the so-called encaustic technique – using molten wax that is then ironed – has been viewed over 1,000 times.
Many of Saric’s Facebook friends began contacting her about additional tips and tricks on how to use the iron as a painting tool, which is why she decided to continue to hold live streams once a week until the end of May.
Some of her virtual “students” even sent her the photos of the paintings they made during the lockdown that have been inspired by her online classes.
She also began regularly posting on Facebook her art works created in isolation at home, trying to encourage others who felt depressed and apathetic to lift their dark thoughts through the bright colours of paint and start painting themselves.
Meliha Bico Druzic, 65, one of Our Bridge’s volunteers, was one of those who needed such a stimulus.
She was having a hard time adjusting to the new reality of not being able to leave her home for weeks.
As an Our Bridge activist, she had been busy for years with the association’s activities. She also loves to paint but couldn’t find any inspiration. Suddenly, after being stuck at home, she realised she had a lot of time on her hands and didn’t know what to do with it.
“I wanted a [real] spring to come, which is why the first painting I made in isolation was a vase full of lilacs,” said Bico Druzic, who after some days of persuasion accepted Zdena’s virtual creative challenge.
She began painting at home and posting her works on Facebook, and challenging her Facebook friends to follow her lead.
Bico Druzic has since exhibited her paintings created during the lockdown at the “My Quarantine” (“Moj Karantin”) art show held at the Our Bridge centre in July. The exhibition included art works of other Our Bridge members as well.
Shifting from offline to online activities
Last year’s offline creative activities for seniors in Our Bridge. Photo: Ajdin Kamber
The response from their online creative communities encouraged Bico Druzic and Saric to continue painting and sharing works on Facebook. As other Our Bridge members began doing the same, their Facebook news feeds have become full of photographed paintings and other handicrafts.
To continue these efforts, but in a more varied and structured manner, they gathered Our Bridge’s members in an art-focused Viber group.
The initiative, called “There is some secret connection” (“Ima neka tajna veza”), has been designed in collaboration with the Serbian association Art Aparat, whose co-founder and music teacher, Maja Curcic, started producing video singing lessons in Belgrade and sharing them with the members of the Viber group in June.
Apart from singing, the women teach each other how to paint, design bags and do handicrafts via video messages. The Viber group also serves as a channel of everyday communication.
The project was originally designed to bring together seniors from Zenica and the Serbian capital Belgrade through music and painting classes.
In both countries, the elderly suffer from an absence of systemic protection of their rights, not only related to health and social protection, but to their cultural needs as well, according to Curcic.
Apart from cultural programmes in homes for the aged and the activities of local pensioners’ associations, seniors have limited options to participate in cultural initiatives.
Similar to the centers for healthy aging, Serbia also has daily centres for seniors that provide some cultural activities, but these are limited in their number and capacities.
That is why Art Aparat and Our Bridge established a partnership, though the initial idea had to be adjusted due to the pandemic and transformed into a remote creative exchange, focused only on Zenica.
“Projects like this one encourage seniors to use new technologies and learn how to adapt to the new times,” Curcic says. She believes it helps the elderly to overcome barriers such as physical distance or inability to move, and restore a sense of belonging to their community.
This is the first time Curcic, who has been using music as a tool of social integration for vulnerable groups of children and youngsters in Serbia for a decade, has worked with seniors. Judging by the feedback from the members of her Zenica online choir, she has succeeded.
“I can’t wait to meet Maja in person and sing with her,” Vucenovic says. Bico Druzic agrees, adding that Maja’s choice of the song for the lessons – which is Imagine life in the rhythm of music to dance to (Zamisli život u ritmu muzike za ples – a song of from the popular Yugoslav band Film – fits her taste perfectly: “I love music, especially the songs that are closer to my younger age, and that have a soul.”
Bico Druzic is also participating in another Our Bridge international collaboration that was re-shaped from an art residency in Zenica into an online artistic platform when the pandemic broke out.
The project called “Urban Herstories – The female face of Zenica” – aims to document social, political and urban changes in Bosnia since the 1950s through the eyes of Zenica’s elderly women, and Bico Druzic’s story, related to her elementary school, is part of it.
Artists from Slovakia and Ukraine were about to visit Zenica in mid-March and work with Bico Druzic and five other women just when Bosnia – and Europe – began to close down. The stories will, however, still serve as a female audio guide to the city and as a basis for online-based art residencies of Slovakian and Ukrainian artists.
‘It’s nicer when you can see a person live’
Our Bridge members learning how to use Viber and social media on smartphones during training. Photo: Facebook/Nas most Zenica
Although new artistic ideas have arisen from the necessary adaptations of the “Urban Herstories” project to the online sphere, physical encounters between the women in Zenica and the Slovakian and Ukrainian artists – which could not take place – are an irreplaceable part of the experience, says Katarzyna Zielińska, manager of the Polish cultural institution Strefa Kultury Wroclaw, one of Our Bridge’s partner organisations on the project.
“I had a feeling that we have lost the human aspect due to the lack of the real, person-to-person contacts with the storytellers [women] and the lack of a first-hand experience of the place we were supposed to work in [Zenica],” Zielińska says.
Curcic from Art Aparat shares that sentiment, warning that it can demotivate people who never before attended an online education class to follow the instructions of a teacher who they can see only on a screen.
“It’s nicer when you can see a person live, encourage him or her or explain [in more detail] what you wanted to say. The pre-recorded rehearsals are not the same as the real contact,” Curcic adds.
Working with people not used to communication platforms like Viber or social networks like Facebook is another major challenge. Adjusting to the new ways of socialization and collaboration has been difficult for most of the Our Bridge’s membership, whose average age is 60.
The association ran several offline training sessions on how to use smartphones once the strict epidemiological measures had been lifted. But a few women still felt discouraged by the amount of information they needed to absorb, and haven’t continued to participate in smartphone-based activities.
Despite the shortcomings of such initiatives, the online-based creative programmes might remain the safest – and possibly the only – way to work with the elderly during the pandemic.
“Organisations like Our Bridge, which facilitate online creative connections, are of great importance for the elderly,” says Zenica-raised psychologist and psycho-therapist Dzelila Mulic Corbo. “In that way, they [elderly] stay in touch with the outside world, have contacts with others, and make their days meaningful.”
Recalling that adjusting to the “new normality” imposed by the pandemic has been hard for practically everyone, Mulic Corbo says that for the elderly, whose flexibility in new circumstances is naturally lower, the adaptation process is much harder.
Our Bridge will keep developing online-based activities as long as the risk of COVID-19 infection continues, according to Saric. In the meantime, it is looking for other innovative ways to help motivate seniors stay connected through their mobile phones and so mentally overcome the challenges of the pandemic.
“Nothing would make us more happy than to be able to freely gather in our space. But, until then, our [mobile] phones will have to play their role,” Saric concluded.
This publication was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of BIRN and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
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US President Donald J. Trump participates in a ‘Make America Great Again Victory Rally’ campaign event at the Richard B. Russell Airport in Rome, Georgia, USA, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/BRANDEN CAMP
Our Bridge members learning how to use Viber and social media on smartphones during training. Photo: Facebook/Nas most Zenica