Conspiracy theories in Bulgaria

By Dr. Rumena Filipova, Chairperson, Institute for Global Analytics

Conspiracy theories represent a subset of disinformation narratives, which can be defined as the attribution of the causes of a given, typically dramatic, event or development to powerful forces operating behind the scenes. A number of interconnected reasons can account for susceptibilities to conspiratorial thinking. Popular dissatisfaction with governance deficits and perceptions of social and economic injustice provide a fertile ground for the dissemination of conspiracies. More specifically, distrust in elites facilitates conspiratorial thinking that looks for answers which are not sanctioned by ‘mainstream’ media and official political discourse. Moreover, circumstances of anxiety, uncertainty and perceptions of threat to the group enhance the propensity to conspiracy theories during times of crisis. And attitudes to science also exert an impact – the less there is an orientation towards informing oneself from and trusting scientific research, the more easily one can fall prey to unsubstantiated pseudo-scientific theories.

With regard to Bulgaria, research has shown extensive proclivity to conspiracies on a comparative European and international scale. In 2020, Bulgarians topped the ranking of 28 nations worldwide in terms of associating the coronavirus with a deliberate contagion theory as 58% of the polled expressed this view. National polling has similarly demonstrated that over half of the polled Bulgarians think that the coronavirus is an artificially engineered virus.

Conspiracy theories have proliferated in a virulent manner especially with the start of the pandemic and the onset of the Ukraine war. A number of conspiratorial narratives gained ground in relation to COVID, many of them pushed by pro-Kremlin sources. Various, frequently contradictory, theories have been disseminated in Bulgaria regarding the origins and consequences of the coronavirus (in parallel to similar narratives proliferated elsewhere around the world). For instance, COVID has been attributed to ulterior motives and actions aimed at political warfare; to the designs of ‘global capitalists’ attempting to conceal a deliberately created economic crisis, whereby Bill Gates is said to play an especially sinister role; or to schemes whose alleged goal is control over population numbers.

In the context of the Ukraine war, some of the most widely disseminated conspiracy theories in Bulgaria claim that US-controlled bio labs established across Ukraine and the post-Soviet space work on ethnically and racially targeted biological weapons, whose ultimate objective is the ostensible destruction of the population of Russia. For example, fringe, pro-Russian websites with a significant social media followership (such as Skandalno.net, whose Facebook page gathers over 94000 followers) push such conspiracies by uncritically citing the Russian authorities as a source of ‘evidence’.

Moreover, some conspiracy theories have linked up the coronavirus pandemic and the war, claiming that COVID was bioengineered by the US in Ukrainian labs and that ‘global oligarchic capitalism’ utilized the pandemic as a powerful trigger for the creation of fascism around the world, with the current war supposedly diverting attention away from COVID and concealing the installation of fascist regimes. Pro-Russian public group ‘Имам право да знам‘ (translated in English as ‘I have the right to know’) exemplifies one among a number of similar Kremlin-leaning social media accounts, where sections of the Bulgarian public share and abide by Russia-originating conspiracy theories.

So how can the proliferation and extensive popularity of conspiracy theories and disinformation, more generally, be tackled in Bulgaria? Policy-makers should, among other initiatives, conduct a comprehensive risk assessment of national vulnerabilities to media influence operations (particularly in times of crisis and uncertainty), further contributing actively to EU policies focused on regulating the dissemination of disinformation in the online space such as through the Digital Services Act. For its part, civil society should create and publicize counter-narratives attentive to and addressing the psychological mechanisms behind receptivity to conspiracies. This would thus amount to forging a cooperative and coordinated strategy by involving the variety of stakeholders engaged in the struggle against disinformation.

/TheGeopost