Elections in Serbia and an explosion of pro-Russian disinformation show why state actors’ manipulation of social media in the Balkans is now a critical issue for Europe, writes Antoinette Nikolova.
In countries such as Serbia, where traditional media companies are largely under government control, social media platforms are a crucial lifeline for independent voices.
But these same platforms are increasingly harnessed by authoritarian regimes to disseminate false or harmful content, undermining social cohesion and the democratic process.
A new report published by the Balkan Free Media Initiative has found that social media platforms are being manipulated to spread disinformation and attack critical voices to consolidate political power in Serbia and Republika Srpska.
As Serbians prepare to go to the polls on 3 April, it feels like a bitter missed opportunity that social media companies have not done more to support credible media outlets and protect their platforms from abuse.
The way pro-government disinformation spreads in Serbia is simple. Government officials make false or misleading statements, which are then reported by state-controlled media before being disseminated widely on social media.
Let’s take an example. President Aleksandar Vučić claims that Serbia has the highest salaries within the region. (A sure way to encourage political support.) Unfortunately for Serbians, it is not true. At least four other comparable countries – Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia and Romania – had higher salaries at the time of his statement. That does not prevent the misleading claim from circulating online.
More dangerous examples have seen government-led smear campaigns against independent journalists, picked up by the dutiful tabloid media, lead to journalists receiving death threats over Facebook.
Bots and trolls have been traced back to the ruling SNS party. Twitter removed 8,558 accounts “working to promote Serbia’s ruling party and its leader” in 2020. An investigation by the Balkans Investigative Reporting Network found pro-government bots had been set up by “employees of state-owned companies, local authorities and even schools”.
This is straight out of Russia’s disinformation playbook and should concern social media companies and European policymakers alike.
But it is not just Russian tactics being replicated on social media in Serbia. Pro-Russian disinformation narratives have also exploded since the invasion of Ukraine.
Pro-government tabloid Informer went so far as to claim that Ukraine attacked Russia on the day the invasion started. With this kind of dangerous propaganda being splashed across the frontpages of mainstream newspapers, it is little wonder that anti-Ukraine conspiracy theories quickly spread among Serbian Facebook users.
Many probably think Belarus is the only European country openly supporting Putin's aggression against Ukraine. But this is not the case. Here are some front pages of totally or partly pro-government Serbian newspapers today:
— Michael Martens (@Andric1961) February 22, 2022
One video showed a projected swastika on the staircase of a shopping mall in Kyiv. The caption read: “If we’re going to line up, I know which side I’m not on. A shopping centre in Central Ukraine. This video will probably be removed.”
The video was shared over 3,700 times and had over 60,000 views. It was fake.
Factcheckers found that it dated from 16 February 2019 and was a stunt by unidentified hackers who accessed the mall’s IT system to project the image and spread hatred.
As Europe experiences the first major conflict on its soil since the Balkan wars of the 1990s, the role that social media platforms play in the information war can no longer be ignored.
Ironically, the Russian invasion has also shown that social media companies can do more to prevent harmful content. Access to Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik was restricted on Facebook across the EU, while other content was “demoted” on Facebook globally to make it “harder to find.”
More needs to be done. At a minimum, social media companies must expand existing policies for labelling state-controlled or state-affiliated outlets and introduce more significant sanctions for outlets found to violate content policies and publish disinformation repeatedly. Algorithms that promote media outlets with high journalistic and ethical standards should also be introduced.
BFMI has put together six specific recommendations in an open letter addressed to Meta’s President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg. We encourage anyone committed to improving the information environment in the Balkans to sign.
In Serbia, pro-government and pro-Russian disinformation spread much faster than independent fact-checkers can document. This is causing growing anti-European and NATO sentiment, fostering security concerns for the region.
Aleksandar Vučić – the man all but certain to retain the presidency next week – is arguably Putin’s closest ally in Europe after Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus. Under his presidency, Serbia has been ranked the fifth most “autocratising” country in the world.
His dominance over the Serbian information environment couldn’t be clearer. According to one study, politicians from the ruling coalition received 85% of total broadcasting time on the top TV stations, while President Vučić received 40% of total coverage for all politicians in the months leading up to the election.
In this context, social media has an even more vital role to play. But in the Balkans, social media companies have been passive in regulating their platforms, allowing state-backed media and disinformation to flourish at the expense of credible media outlets.
This must change now. Without concerted action by Facebook and others, democracy and stability in the Balkans will continue to suffer from potentially far-reaching consequences for the rest of Europe.
Antoinette Nikolova is the Director of the Balkan Free Media Initiative (BFMI), an independent watchdog that monitors the media environment in the Balkans. BFMI this week published a report on manipulation of social media in Serbia and Republika Srpska, the Serb majority entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
This article was originally published on Euractiv.com.
