Countering malign foreign disinformation and propaganda

Countering Russian disinformation and propaganda requires not only deterrence, but also a long-term strategy of media literacy training and awareness campaigns for the general public. In the short term, the creation of a state body to monitor the media environment and combat disinformation, similar to the existing ones in the Western countries, would help. Another…

Factcheck.bg: Nuclear or information bombs – no facts, only words

The narrative about the Ukrainian “nuclear bomb” may not be among the most popular stories in our country related to the war in Ukraine. But the way in which it is constructed illustrates how Kremlin propaganda works: loud claims, unsupported by facts, respectively – difficult or impossible to verify and possibly refute; simultaneous dissemination of…

Mediappol.bg: The loopholes in the Bulgarian position on the crisis in Ukraine are becoming more dangerous

Bulgaria has once again proven to be one of the most insecure NATO member states – with a divided society, a “captured” political class, corruption and lack of leadership, and the cost of this behaviour in the deepening crisis over Ukraine is becoming higher and higher. Russia’s main hybrid weapon in Bulgaria is the NATO-Russia…

Disinformation attack in Bulgaria: “There is no Russian aggression in Ukraine” and “Happy freedom from fascism”

“There is no Russian aggression against Ukraine”; “Ukraine has joined the Russian Federation”; “Happy freedom, Russian brothers and sisters”. Such and other similar misinformation posts and statuses are being spread in hundreds of Bulgarian Facebook groups and dozens of websites, a check by Factcheck.bg showed. The onslaught of messages with false or misleading information, spread…

Our Methodology

Detection of disinformation narratives and particular fake news, related to them, through manual monitoring of preselected list of media sources related to foreign political and economic stakeholders Elaboration of list of information sources in Bulgarian language to be monitored as a possible origin of respective narratives and fake news, incl. media and their Facebook and…

Partners

In response to the urgent need for more efforts to combat disinformation phenomena in Bulgaria and the SEE a Consortium of five partners was created under the FENCE initiative. The partners will join forces to build capacity among professional communities, to raise awareness among the general public, as well as to increase general resilience in…