Disinformation on the Rise, Georgia: Russia Exploits Societal Vulnerabilities in Romania and the Balkans

Romania, like many other countries in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, faces a constant wave of false narratives and well-organized manipulations, which are present every day, says Calin Georgia, an expert and a Doctor of Philosophy in Romania.

In an interview with The Geopost, Georgia says that these narratives, often spread by Russian influence networks, but increasingly by local actors, aim to create divisions in society by exploiting nationalist, religious and cultural sentiments.

He also discusses what steps can be taken to combat this phenomenon in a digital environment.

Full interview:

Thank you very much for this interview for The Geopost. How is the disinformation situation in Romania in general?

Georgia: Well, we’ve been seeing, I mean, the disinformation that we’re encountering is not only during election time or just before election time. It takes place each and every day. And while the narratives themselves are very much present in the literature and the case studies, the same narratives we have in Romania along general lines are the ones being disseminated in the Balkans and in the ex-communist space.

So we have, for instance, narratives that deal with the idealization of the past, strong nationalistic sentiment that is being expressed through xenophobic messages, the resurgence of far-right, the use of religion in order to divide, to create more distance between people. While these narratives are present in obviously Russian dissemination, Russian networks of influence, they’ve also been taken over by domestic actors. So these narratives are also being disseminated by domestic actors who are either sympathizers with Russian influencers or, I think, the most widespread case.

It’s just that there’s people that have certain vulnerabilities and these vulnerabilities are exploited in a very devious way by foreign intervention and by these actors. One such situation is the exploitation of religion and traditional values, traditional Christian values, in order to promote hatred against the LGBTQ community in order to promote hate against women, so anti-feminism in a way. These are present and we’ve seen in the last several months an increase in these narratives, also anti-Semitic narratives, a huge increase. It’s not to say… I mean, the phenomenon is very complex. These information bubbles and these echo chambers exist there. We don’t know the extent of their presence, because at this moment we do not have access to data.

Since August last year, CrowdTangle has stopped functioning, so we don’t have data from the platforms. Platforms are becoming more and more opaque. There is less transparency now with the moderation of the platforms becoming solely reliant on the community. We’ve seen this being weaponized before, so there are concerns that this will happen again. And we have, yes, the electoral processes that will come up in May. And we are doing everything that we can in order to be prepared for them. And what I would like to put forth to our partners and our colleagues in the Balkans is that in order to face this phenomenon, which is global, we all have vulnerabilities, we all have vulnerable groups that are now being targeted and micro-targeted is that as long as we can pull resources together and as long as we can learn from each other’s experiences, and as long as we can put together pressure on the social media platforms in order to get the data that we need to monitor this public space, because this space, the social media platforms are the squares of old where literate people would disseminate information to the illiterate masses.

And this is happening now with the influencers that are disseminating information, whether it’s false or true, towards the masses that do not simply have time to check because you spend eight hours at work, then you spend time with your children, you don’t have time to triple check the information. So it is up to the civil society, up to you guys and us together to make sure that truth is still a public good and that this will remain in the years, in the hard years to come.

/The Geopost