COVID-19 е измислица с цел да увеличи печалбата на фармацевтичните компании."/>
© Georgi Kozhukharov
– About a third of Bulgarians believe that COVID-19 is a fabrication aimed at increasing the profits of pharmaceutical companies.
Vaccines are dangerous and can be more harmful than COVID-19, people do not die from the virus, statistics are manipulated, the European Green Pact is responsible for the energy crisis and rising electricity prices.
These are some of the disinformation messages in the Bulgarian Facebook space during the election campaign. The survey, conducted by the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD), is called “Propaganda and Misinformation in the Election Campaign: Key Messages and Dissemination Channels” and was presented on Friday (November 12th). It covers publicly available Facebook pages and groups that were monitored between October 14 and November 8, 2021.
It says that The absolute champions in rapidly increasing the number of followers on their social network pages are “Vazrazhdane” and its leader Kostadin Kostadinov. He has attracted the most new followers from all presidential candidates (over 22,000 in just 3 weeks) and the main reason is the introduction of a mandatory green certificate on October 19, against which Kostadinov is waging an irreconcilable campaign. In the group of five nationalist parties (Vazrazhdane, Alternative for Bulgaria, VMRO, Ataka and Volya), Vazrazhdane received 95% of all interactions and 98% of all newly added followers in this group.
Also connected with “Vazrazhdane” today is “one of the main sources of misinformation in user pages and groups – the profile of Dr. Atanas Mangarov, as six of the ten most popular posts” in the category Disinformation messages related to COVID-19 have been published by him. On Friday, Mangarov backed Vazrazhdane’s views as an “independent expert” and took part in a press conference with Kostadinov.
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Although sociologists point out that Kostadinov has little chance of becoming the head of state compared to the leading candidates, he has the second largest number of followers on Facebook – about 200,000 against 365,000 of President Rumen Radev. Something more impressive is that out of a total of 1-69 million interactions with all publications of presidential candidates during the observed period, Kostadinov accounts for 60%.
Politicians used disinformation instead of inventing protection
The Center for the Study of Democracy believes that the pre-election situation further reinforces the polarization and division of public debate on social media. Their analysis confirms the conclusions that the country is one of the most vulnerable member states of the European Union to the spread of propaganda and disinformation messages. In addition, due to the skepticism of Bulgarians in the future the country will have problems to follow a single European policy and this will have serious economic consequences.
“The disinformation messages that have intensified in recent years with the development of social media are extremely problematic throughout the democratic world and many authoritarian regimes, including Russia, use social networks and other means to increase their influence in European countries and to In Bulgaria, very little is said and done to protect the election process from such a malicious influence. Bulgaria is one of the countries that speaks or does very little about protecting the discussion space from such harmful influence.“, said at the presentation of the report the expert Ruslan Stefanov.
According to him, there is no infrastructure in Bulgaria that would allow protection from misinformation and instead of political parties to pay attention to this effect of social media, the opposite happened. social media influenced political parties.
According to Stefanov, in practice in Bulgaria at the moment it can be seen how the spread of misinformation and the lack of adequate protection against it has led to living in a socio-economic experiment in which the test is to see what life will look like, if not the recommendations of the medical institutions and the scientific opinions are followed.
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“Part of the reason is the political situation in which there was a lack of leadership, and fashion and social algorithms are followed, and it seems that politics in Bulgaria follows these algorithms and does not try to regulate public discussion and public space,” said the expert.
The mainstream media cover the pandemic and related measures objectively, but the content of problematic pages and groups achieves a higher percentage of interactions (a word that summarizes the various reactions on social networks – likes, shares), although with a smaller number of interactions and followers is indicated in the analysis.
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The main misinformation messages: Only Russia will save us
The media that were included in the study were divided into main and “problematic” (with a history of publishing manipulative messages and external influence), and the profiles of influential people, user groups and pages aimed at polarizers were examined. The pages of all major parties and the most popular politicians were also observed in the analysis. A special group of pages devoted to the discussion of the topic COVID-19 was studied.
The predominant disinformation messages related to COVID-19 are:
- “Certificates are meaningless because vaccinated people become infected and spread the virus as much as unvaccinated people.”
- “certificates are a form of dictatorship or fascism”
- “vaccines have been developed for a short period of time and are therefore untested and dangerous.”
- “The pandemic was invented by politicians and pharmaceutical companies with malicious purposes.”
The most popular messages related to the European Green Pact present it as a “utopian economically unfeasible dream” that is responsible for the energy crisis. Six of the ten most popular posts on the subject are published by pro-Russian sources, who very often advocate pro-Russian ones as well. The common theme between them is opposition to the European Green Pact, often through manipulative explanations of high prices, and strong support for Russian energy projects, such as the Belene NPP, are part of the study’s findings. Six of the ten most popular posts on the subject were published by pro-Russian sources, who often advocate pro-Russian ones as well: the official BSP television, Pogled Info and Epicenter.
As part of the survey, a public opinion poll was conducted (among 800 citizens over the age of 18, in the period October 22 – November 8). It shows:
- About a third of Bulgarians believe that COVID-19 is a fabrication aimed at increasing the profits of pharmaceutical companies.
- Over 40% believe that COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous and untested.
- The proportion of non-believers in coronavirus and vaccine efficacy is stable in all age groups
- More than 40 percent believe that the statistics on deaths from the virus have been adjusted.
- More than a third of the population also supports the conspiracy thesis that measures against the spread of the COVID-19 infection are a political conspiracy encouraged by foreign forces.
According to the data, skepticism is similar to European Green Pact. The lack of awareness may explain some of these opinions, said expert Martin Vladimirov of the Center for the Study of Democracy:
- Nearly 40 percent of respondents say that only the Green Deal is to blame for the increase in electricity and gas prices.
- Every second Bulgarian agrees with the often spread myth that there will be a power regime when the coal power plants are closed.
- Nearly two-thirds of people continue to support the construction of the Belene NPP and Turkish Stream.
- 45 percent also see Russia as the only possible savior of Europe in times of energy crisis.
According to the analysis of the election campaign in the online space, the pages of the main parties take a major part of the political discussion on social networks. However, new movements such as “We continue to change”, as well as nationalist parties, especially “Vazrazhdane”, show a steady increase in the number of followers and interactions (likes, comments and shares), said expert Goran Georgiev.
The Center for the Study of Democracy calls on the Bulgarian media and the government, as well as civil society organizations, to take urgent coordinated measures to better protect democratic debates from propaganda and misinformation. The Center pointed out the need for working independent institutions, especially in the media sector, to serve as a corrective and to moderate the debate on social media.
