Tag: fake news

Social Media Disinformation Spreads Panic About Kosovo-Serbia ‘War’

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

While Kosovo Serb barricades blocking roads to two border crossing points to the border with Serbia are being removed, disinformation about the conflict is spreading on social media and several media platforms worldwide.

Kosovo is currently trending on Twitter with over 250,000 tweets.

Twitter users, mainly from Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, Spain, Serbia, Kosovo, and Albania, are all sharing disinformation of an alleged “war” that has broken out between Kosovo and Serbia or sharing propaganda against Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, declared in 2008.

Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Goncharenko’s tweets on Sunday received thousands of likes, retweets, and comments after he wrote: “Ukraine is ready to act with our troops on the ground. Serbia is trying to start an aggressive war.”

In fact, the NATO-led peace-keeping mission in Kosovo, KFOR, on the grounds 1999, has declared its readiness to intervene “if stability is jeopardized in the North of Kosovo”. No Ukrainian troops are on the ground in Kosovo, however. Nor has Ukraine recognized Kosovo’s sovereignty.

James Ker-Lindsay, visiting professor at London School of Economics  LSE who focuses on conflict, peace and security in South East Europe, condemned Goncharenko’s tweet, asking him not to “make matters worse”.

“This is an irresponsible and unnecessary comment. And it also raises all sorts of complex questions that I’m not sure Ukraine is ready to answer. If you really believe in peace, don’t become part of the problem in the Balkans. Focus on home” Ker-Lindsay wrote.

Kosovo Serbs erected barricades consisting of trucks filled with gravel blocked roads to two border crossing points with Serbia before being removed on Monday.

They were erected after Kosovo’s government moved to implement so-called reciprocity measures with Serbia over vehicle licence plates and IDs for one month, before agreeing to delay the measures if the barricades are removed.

“Crossing points in Jarinje and Bernjak remain closed,” PM Albin Kurti told media on Monday, adding “all border points are issuing the [new] 90-day exit-entrance document. Up to 1,501 citizens have been provided with this document, waiting 20 seconds”.

The Kosovo government decided in June that every person wanting to cross the state border using personal IDs issued by Serbian authorities will now be issued temporary declaration forms valid for 90 days that replace the Serbian-issued document.

The decision reciprocates Serbian authorities’ non-recognition of Kosovo-issued IDs, introducing the same measure as Serbia implements toward Kosovo citizens.

A similar escalation occurred in September 2021, after Kosovo’s government required vehicles with Serbian licence plates to switch to temporary Kosovo-issued ones at the border. Kosovo citizens who have licence plates with the letters RKS, short for Republic of Kosovo, have had to do this for years on the border with Serbia.

Photos from last year are being shared on social media as if they happened on Sunday, On July 31, 2022. Albanian Muslim preacher Elvis Naci with 1.2 million followers on Instagram, shared a photo of Kosovo Special forces moving to the barricades closer to the border from September 2021 captioned: “God protect the Albanians of Kosovo as well as the brave men of the special unit who establish peace and security,”

Barricades in the village of Rudar, on the road to Serb-majority Kosovo municipality of Leposavic, close to the border with Serbia, August 1, 2022. Photo: Shkodrane Dakaj/BIRN

Ukrainian MP Goncharenko’s tweet was not the only one suggesting a war already broke out between Kosovo and Serbia.

Turkish writer Huseyin Hakkı Kahveci tweeted in Turkish: “War broke out between Serbia and Kosovo. FIRE STARTED IN THE troubled BALKANS”.

His tweet, which received over 200 likes and over 80 retweets, claimed that “Kosovo Special Forces sent additional troops to the Jarinje border crossing with Serbia. We are in the period when the war begins to spread to Europe via the BALKANS and to Russia via the CAUCASUS”.

Nebojsa Malic, a Bosnian Serb columnist for Anti-War site, went on Twitter to say that “NATO’s favorite stooge ‘Kosovo’ is trying to start a fight with Serbia right now,” claiming this explained how “well the conflict in Ukraine is going for the West”. His tweet received over 2,000 likes.

Alongside posts on war breaking out between Kosovo and Serbia, many social media users, as well as media platforms, shared unconfirmed information of shots fired between Kosovo and Serbian forces.

Twitter account ConflictTr, with over 200,000 followers, tweeted: “Kosovo soldiers injured in the clashes on the Serbia-Kosovo border are transferred to Mitrovica state hospital”.

Several Kosovo media such as Nacionale and Indeks Online among others reported that a Kosovo police official and two Serbian citizens had been injured by gunfire between police and the citizens that erected the barricades. This was not true. Nacionale later deleted its news.

Kosovo Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla told the media on Monday that “11 citizens have been injured and received the necessary treatment and some citizens’ and police vehicles have been damaged by armed criminal structures”. Kosovo police are investigating.

However, no armed conflict has yet erupted between Kosovo Special Police and Serbian police or military forces.

Several Twitter accounts also shared “Kosovo is Serbia” claims, which are often part of Serbian nationalist discourse.

Twitter user Inga Canarias, with over 1.5 thousand followers, retweeted a photo of a mural that writes “Kosovo is Serbia” with the description in Spanish: “Since there seems to be trouble between Serbia and Kosovo, it will have to be said once again that Kosovo is an integral, inalienable part of Serbia.” Several Spanish accounts shared similar tweets.

The former US envoy under Donald Trump for the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue, Richard Grenell, also joined the turmoil, mainly blaming Kosovo PM Albin Kurti for the situation but also sharing inaccurate information about former Kosovo president Hashim Thaci.

“Let’s be very clear, the Europeans pushed The Hague to arrest (former President) Hashim Thaci after 20 years of investigations simply because he was negotiating with (Donald) Trump,” he said.

“They have nothing on him and keep him held because of politics. It’s why ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia) should be dissolved,” Grenell said in one tweet, which received over 500 likes.

Kosovo’s Online Media Lack Resources to Combat Fake News: Report

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

The Press Council of Kosovo published a report on Monday entitled Misinformation, Disinformation and Fake News in Online Media in Kosovo, which concluded that online media in the country lack the staff to deal with these issues and the money to train journalists in ethical and professional reporting.

The Press Council, a self-regulatory body which includes most of Kosovo’s media, surveyed 18 online media in Kosovo for the report, as well as interviewing media and legal experts.

“Representatives of [state] institutions should have been part of the report but they did not respond to our invitation,” said the head of the Press Council, Imer Mushkolaj.

“It is worrying that institutions ask media to be disciplined but they do not follow the procedures of complaint in cases in which they claim they have been slandered by the media,” Mushkolaj added.

The executive director of the Kosovo Association of Journalists, Getoarbe Mulliqi Boja, said that most fake news is circulated by websites published by interest groups, which are not registered as media outlets.

“Institutions increase disinformation by not giving statements to journalists who, based on the requests of the media they work at, for to get information via secondary sources,” Mulliqi Boja added.

However, the Press Council’s report concluded that there are journalists who directly cause the spread of fake news.

Qerim Ondozi, the author of the report, explained that it was concluded that many media do not follow the Press Council’s ethical code or are not aware of what it says.

Ondozi said that “confusion exists when it comes to internal regulations, when we asked about their existence we were expecting the answers to be related to the Press Council of Kosovo ethics code, however we had various answers, including ‘it is on the wall at the newsroom’”.

Seven out of 18 online media outlets that were surveyed said that they do not have written editorial policies, which increases “the difficulty of practices to identify and verify fake news”, the report says.

Six out of the 18 surveyed said they only have two editors, while at least one online media has no editors, and one has 15 editors.

The report also says that only eight out of the 18 online media have sub-editors. It says this is a source of great concern because “a sub-editor can be the one to identify the presence of elements of fake news”.

Almost half of the online media do not provide their staff with training opportunities for professional development, which is also problematic in combatting fake news, the report says.

The report’s respondents mentioned the lack of financial resources as a problem as well media organizations often being small. At around 40 per cent of the outlets, the owner is also the director.

The lack of financial resources directly influences the “lack of professional staff”, which Mushkolaj considers to be one of the main issues.

The Press Council report recommends that media increase capacities and training, use clear practices in identifying sources and facts prior to publication, and follow professional standards.

Turkish Journalists Urge Govt to Drop Disinformation Law

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Thousands of protesters from journalists’ unions and NGOs gathered in Istanbul and other cities across the country on Tuesday to call on the government to drop the disinformation law which is due to be passed by the Turkish parliament soon.

“It is called the ‘Press Law’, but it has been prepared without being asked for by professional media organisations. There is no article in it to protect journalists or protect the news,” the journalists’ organisations including the Journalists’ Union of Turkey, the Turkish Journalists’ Association and the Press Council said in a statement.

“On the contrary, prison sentences, closures, censorship and heavy controls over internet media are coming,” the statement added.

The legislation was presented to Turkey’s parliament on May 27, aiming to increase government control over the internet, media and social media.

“We are describing this law as the heaviest censorship law in the history of Turkey which will completely destroy the freedom of the press and freedom of expression,” the media organisations said.

“A journalist who does not disclose his news source under the name of ‘fighting disinformation’ will be given a prison sentence. Prosecutors and judges will decide which news is ‘false’ and which news is ‘true’ in line with the vague regulation,” they warned.

The law was prepared by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP and its far-right partner, the Nationalist Movement Party, MHP.

The law, which is expected to pass soon, for the first time defines the crime of “spreading misinformation on purpose”.

It envisages punishment for anyone who “publicly disseminates false information regarding internal and external security, public order and the general welfare of the country, in a way that breaches the public peace, simply for the purpose of creating anxiety, fear or panic among the population”.

According to the proposed law, people who spread misinformation can be jailed for one to three years. If a court decides that a person spread misinformation as part of an illegal organisation, the jail sentence will be increased by 50 per cent.

Journalists can also be charged under the new law if they use anonymous sources to hide the identity of a person who is spreading misinformation.

Ukraine War Prompts Flood of Misinformation, Fake News

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

The second half of February was almost completely absorbed by the start of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, coinciding with a significant rise in cases of disinformation and fake news.

In Serbia, Bosnia and Hungary, several cases of disinformation on the Ukrainian conflict were reported. In the latter two countries, online manipulations were motivated by internal reasons, mainly to discredit political opponents.

Nationalist rhetoric in Bosnia and Herzegovina meanwhile continued to fuel online tensions. In North Macedonia, the arrival of members of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group gave rise to episodes of intolerance with the local community. Cyberattacks and phishing scams systematically hit public and private IT servers in Serbia, North Macedonia and Croatia.

Misinformation on Ukraine, political attacks, spike in Serbia, Bosnia, Hungary 

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, online media and local newspapers have been almost completely consumed by the war.

Social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook have become powerful tools of political activism and propaganda that in many cases ended up amplifying misinformation on the Russian invasion.


A Ukrainian serviceman stands guard in downtown Kyiv (Kiev), Ukraine, 03 March 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/ZURAB KURTSIKIDZE

In Serbia, the Twitter account of Youth of JAZAS, an NGO committed to HIV support and prevention, was taken over by an unknown person on February 25. Tweets from the hacked account compared Ukraine to AIDS and claimed that Russia was “the cure”. The next day, after regaining control of the account, Youth of JAZAS apologised for the tweets.

In another episode, several web portals in Serbia made false claims about a change to the Zagreb Philharmonic program. Online media wrongly linked the changes of the program concerning the works of Russian composer Tchaikovsky to the war in Ukraine.

On February 25, Dušanka Majkić, an MP in Bosnia’s parliament from the main Bosnian Serb party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrat Party, SNSD, tweeted that Bosnia could suffer the same consequences as attacked Ukraine if it joins NATO. “In March 2021, Moscow promised to react if Bosnia takes any further steps towards NATO. Don’t say you haven’t been warned,” the tweet read.

In Hungary, fake news and falsehoods on the Russo-Ukrainian War led to political clashes and smear campaigns targeting political opponents.

Pro-government media in the country struggle to move away from their former pro-Russian narrative. On the one hand, public media, pro-government media and some pundits uncritically reported untrue statements from the Kremlin about Ukraine. These include that Ukrainian troops entered Russia first, that a Ukrainian nation does not exist, and that Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky is comparable to Hitler.

Even after the Russian attacks began, some media still claimed Russia had no plans to attack Ukraine. Various Facebook pages linked to the ruling Fidesz party are also still spreading Russian propaganda. On the other hand, both government politicians and pro-government media have falsely claimed that opposition politicians want to send soldiers to Ukraine, plunging Hungary into war with Russia.

Finally, an item of disinformation about the Ukraine conflict has been widely shared online in both Bosnia and Hungary. Hundreds of thousands of users have watched a video on Facebook in less than 24 hours, apparently showing a military plane being attacked by air defence. The post suggests that the video is footage from the war in Ukraine. In reality, the video was from a war simulation computer game. Raskrinkavanje fact-checking portal clarified that the video was from the video game Arma 3, a realistic game released in September 2013 simulating military conflicts.

Religion and nationalism spur online attacks and hate speech in Bosnia and North Macedonia

Ethnic and political tensions, always characteristic of the Bosnian environment are being exacerbated by episodes of nationalist rhetoric in parliament. Aside from Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik’s secessionist threats, his Croatian counterpart has added to tensions.


President of the presidency of Bosnia and Hercegovina Dragan Covic during the meeting with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic (not pictured) in Belgrade, Serbia, 06 December 2017. Photo: EPA-EFE/KOCA SULEJMANOVIC

The main Bosnian Croat party, the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, and its leader Dragan Covic, who in February blocked electoral reform in the country, have now threatened to block the October general election.

In North Macedonia, tensions with the local resident erupted following the arrival of members of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group, Lev Tahor, in the northern city of Kumanovo in February, despite the authorities’ appeals for tolerance.

Worried about a possible worsening of the situation, the local police escorted 38 members of the sect to an undisclosed hotel, “for their own safety”, police told BIRN.

In another case,  from February 22, authorities filed criminal charges against a woman from Ohrid after she disseminated hate speech on Facebook towards Lev Tahor. On social media, she called for the group to be “burned down together with the hotel” they were staying in.

In Croatia, Martina Mlinarević Sopta, Bosnia’s ambassador to the Czech Republic, was attacked and mocked by nationalists on a YouTube video released on February 24 after she criticized HDZ policies in Bosnia. In the video, titled “It’s not Masha’s fault she’s ours”, published on the Facebook page and YouTube channel of the local carnival in the southwestern Bosnian town of Ljubuški, the face of the ambassador appears at the centre of the screen with the Croatian flag and Jesus holding the Croatian coat-of-arms in the background.

Cyberattacks and phishing scams hit Serbia, North Macedonia and Croatia

Online environments continue to be systematically hit by computer frauds, phishing scams and other cyberattacks that put pressure on public IT servers in several countries.

Our annual digital rights report, Online Intimidation: Controlling the Narrative in the Balkans, noted that between August 2020 and August 2021, in Croatia alone, there were about 26 incidents of computer fraud out of a total of 103 cases reported from the region.

The logo of Italian banking group Intesa Sanpaolo is seen at a branch in Siena, Italy, 05 July 2018. Photo: EPA-EFE/MATTIA SEDDA

On February 18, the National CERT of Serbia warned Facebook users about a phishing campaign aimed at compromising their account credentials. Users were getting messages asking: “Are you in this video?” which also contained a malicious link. Also in Serbia, on 28 February, the local branch of Banca Intesa warned its customers of fraudulent emails allegedly coming from the bank with malicious attachments. In previous cases, the subject of such emails contained information about an alleged payment in euros.

In North Macedonia, after an incident on February 4 in which the well-known hacker group Powerful Greek Army claimed that it had hacked North Macedonia’s Ministry of Education, another hacking episode by the same group hit several banks.

The hacking group this time claimed they had attacked several banks and that access to the banks’ websites was made difficult or completely blocked. However, the national bank, NBRM, said it had intervened quickly and that the security and confidentiality of its data had been secured.

Finally, Croatia was also hit by an incident of cyber fraud on February 23, when the Regulatory Authority for Network Industries, HAKOM, reported receiving several calls from citizens saying they were getting suspicious calls from “Windows Support Centre”, telling them that their computers with Windows were causing problems.

Kosovo Urged to Start Countering Russian Media Disinformation

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

A report published on Tuesday by the Kosovar Institute for Policy Research and Development, KIPRED, about the potential for Russian media disinformation to undermine Kosovo’s statehood urges the authorities to address UN member states with an appropriate strategy to counter it.

The executive director of the Kosovar Institute for Policy Research and Development, Lulzim Peci, told a press conference that the authorities are doing nothing to counter what he called the “Russian diplomatic war against Kosovo”.

“The reactions of Kosovo’s institutions have come without a proper policy on how to act towards Russia and the same institutions have not built any narrative about the Russian state,” Peci said.

The report, entitled ‘Kosovo Observatory: Russian Diplomatic War and Media Disinformation’, analysed statements, press conferences, articles and other documents from Russia that were published from June 1 to August 15 this year.

Peci said the report calculated that “out of 500 news articles that directly or indirectly related to Kosovo, 96 or 19.2 per cent of them contained misinformation”.

According to the report, the largest number of articles containing misinformation were published by Sputnik Serbia (71 items), followed by TASS (nine), Russia Today (four), UNZ (four), Sputnik International (three), Russian Insider (two), The Duran (two) and Newsfront (one).

The report concludes that Russia is trying to undermine Kosovo’s statehood and Western engagement in Kosovo and the region, and to change the narratives about war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, thus undermining the foundations of international justice.

Russian media articles have also accused Kosovo of oppressing local Serbs and the Serbian Orthodox Church, and of disrespecting an agreement to establishing an Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities.

The report warns that a critical moment has come at the end of a moratorium agreed in Washington for Kosovo not to actively seek membership of international organisations and for Serbia not to campaign against Kosovo’s recognition.

“This moment can be used by Russia to work together with Serbia to implement an aggressive campaign for the derecognition of Kosovo,” the report says.

In COVID-19 Fight, Free Speech Becomes Collateral Damage

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

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. 

In Bucharest, the government closed down a dozen news sites for promoting false information concerning the pandemic.

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.

Share This Now! How Conspiracy Theories Swamped North Macedonia

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

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.

Since the main bone of contention is the Macedonian language and identity, it is one of the most sensitive issues currently preoccupying the public.

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.

COVID’s Toll on Digital Rights in Central and Southeastern Europe

Posted on by sofija.todorovic

The report presents an overview of the main violations of digital rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia between January 31 and September 30, 2020, and makes a series of recommendations for authorities in order to curb such infringements during future social crises.

A first report, compiled by BIRN and which contained preliminary findings, showed a rise in digital rights violations in Central and Southeastern Europe during the pandemic, with over half of cases involving propaganda, disinformation or the publication of unverified information.

The global public health crisis triggered by the coronavirus exposed a new the failure of states around the world to provide a framework that would better balance the interests of safety and privacy. Instead, the report documents incidents of censorship, fake news, security breaches and concentration of information.

More than 200 pandemic-related violations tracked

At the onset of the pandemic, numerous violations of digital rights were observed – from violations of the privacy of persons in isolation to manipulation, dissemination of false information and Internet fraud.

BIRN and Share Foundation documented 221 violations in the context of COVID-19 during the eight-month monitoring period, the largest number coming during the initial peak of the pandemic in March and April – 67 and 79 respectively – before slowly declining.

The countries with the highest number of violations to date are Serbia, with 46, and Croatia, with 44.

The most common violation – accounting for roughly half of all cases – was manipulation in the digital environment caused by news sites that published unverified and inaccurate information, and by the circulating of incomplete and false data on social media.

This can be explained in large measure by the low level of media literacy in the countries of the region, where few people actually check the news and information provided to them, while the media themselves often publish unverified information.

The most common targets of digital rights violations were citizens and journalists. However, both of these groups were frequently also among the perpetrators.

Contact tracing apps: Useful or not?

The debate about the use of contact-tracing apps as a method of combating the spread of COVID-19 was one of the most important discussions in Croatia and North Macedonia.

At the very beginning of the pandemic, the Croatian government led by the conservative Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, proposed a change to the Electronic Communications Act under which, in extraordinary situations, the health minister would request from telecommunications companies the location data of users.

Similarly, Macedonian health authorities announced they were looking to use “all tools and means” to combat the virus, with North Macedonia among the first countries in the Western Balkans to launch a contact-tracing app on April 13.

Developed and donated to the Macedonian authorities by Skopje-based software company Nextsense, the StopKorona! app is based on Bluetooth distance measuring technology and stores data locally on users’ devices, while exchanging encrypted, anonymised data relevant to the infection spread for a limited period of 14 days. According to data privacy experts, the decentralised design guaranteed that data would be stored only on devices that run the app, unless they voluntarily submit that data to health authorities.

Croatia launched its own at the end of July, but by late August media reports said the Stop COVID-19 app had been downloaded by less than two per cent of mobile phone users in the country. The threshold for it to be effective is 60 per cent, the reports said.

Key worrying trends mapped

Illustration: Olivia Solis

Bosnia and Herzegovina saw a number of problems with personal data protection, free access to information and disinformation. In terms of disinformation, people were exposed to a variety of false and sometimes outlandish claims, including conspiracy theories about the origin of the coronavirus, its spread by plane and various miracle cures.

Conspiracy theories, like those blaming the spread of the virus on 5G mobile networks, flourished online in Croatia too. One person in Croatia destroyed their Wifi equipment, believing it was 5G.

In Hungary, fake news about COVID-19 arrived even before the virus itself, said journalist Akos Keller Alant, who monitored the digital environment in Hungary.

Several clickbait fake news sites published articles about COVID-19 victims a month before Hungary’s first confirmed case. The Anti-Cybercrime Unit of the Hungarian police arrested several people for spreading fake news, starting in early February when police raided the operators of a network of fake news sites.

In Kosovo, online media emerged as the biggest violators of digital rights by publishing unverified and false information as well as personal health information. Personal data rights were also violated by state institutions and public figures.

In Montenegro, the most worrying digital rights violations concerned privacy and personal data protection of those infected with the coronavirus or those forced to self-isolate.

The early days of the pandemic, when Montenegro was among the few countries that could claim to have kept a lid on the virus, was a rare moment of social and political consensus in the country about how to respond, said Tamara Milas of the Centre for Civic Education in Montenegro, an NGO.

The situation changed, however, when the government was accused of the gross violation of the right to privacy and the right to the protection of personal data.

Like its Western Balkan peers, North Macedonia was flooded with unverified information and claims shared online with regards the pandemic. Some of the most concerning cases included false claims about infected persons, causing a stir on social media.

In Romania, the government used state-of-emergency powers to shut down websites – including news and opinion sites – accused of spreading what authorities deemed fake news about the pandemic, according to BIRN correspondent Marcel Gascon, who monitors digital rights violations in Romania.

In Serbia, a prominent case concerned a breach of security in the country’s central COVID-19 database. For eight days, the login credentials for the database, Information System COVID-19, were publicly available on the website of a public health body.

In another incident, the initials, age, place-of-work and personal address of a person infected with the virus were posted on the official webpage of the municipality of Sid in western Serbia as well as on the town’s social media accounts.

In the report, BIRN and Share Foundation conclude that technology, especially in a time of crisis, should not be seen as the solution to complex issues, be that protection of health or upholding public order and safety. Rather, technology should be used to the benefit of citizens and in the interest of their rights and freedoms.

When intrusive technologies and regulations are put in place, it is hard to take a step back, particularly in societies with weak democratic institutions, the report states. Under such circumstances, the measures applied in one crisis for the protection of public health may one day be repurposed and used against other “social plagues”, ultimately leading to reduced human rights standards.

To read the full report click here. For individual cases, check our regional database, developed together with the SHARE Foundation.

Fake News Rivals Real News for Albanians Reading about COVID-19

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

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.

What the article failed to mention was the fact Buttar is a known conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccination campaigner.

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.

Trump and COVID-19 Fuel North Macedonia’s Clickbait Boom

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

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.

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