Disinformation in Central Europe: a New Investigation Tracks the Spread of False Narratives
Disinformation networks with Russian roots are spreading fake news on social media across Europe, sometimes partnering with local radical movements and alternative media. “Firehose of Falsehood,” a collaborative effort of independent media outlets from across Central Europe, uncovers how such disinformation moves across popular social media sites. While working on their country-specific investigations into the spread of disinformation, the outlets pooled their expertise and resources to collaborate on a cross-border story summarizing their local findings and highlighting disinformation trends as they shift from country to country.
Phase one of the project began in 2022 and mapped the ecosystem of pro-Russian and alt-right websites operating in Central and Eastern Europe, and analyzed how these websites correlate and spread Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories.
Following the publication of phase one and realizing the potential for greater impact in uncovering the spread of disinformation, the Global Anti-Corruption Consortium (GACC) contacted the members of this collective, offering support and expertise to continue developing the second phase of the project. With GACC’s assistance, phase two focused on visual media, specifically TikTok. This analysis combined data and metadata with local reporting, exposing new connections among social media profiles operating in Central and Eastern European countries and bringing a better understanding of how the infrastructure of disinformation is built.
The project incorporated the GACC approach, which includes promoting collaboration among journalists and civil society to achieve greater impact. The team of journalists from nine countries cooperated on cross-border reporting and preparing local stories. They analyzed prominent disinformation trends in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia, with each country offering a unique perspective on the challenges of disinformation in European societies. An independent technological analytical center and an NGO Debunk EU assisted the journalists with collecting and analyzing the data, developing automated methods for reviewing video content on social media which vastly expanded the scope of the reporting.
Through the work completed during the project, a cross-border story demonstrated how video on social media in Central Europe spreads, and how the personal pages of certain politicians are used to spread disinformation and Russian propaganda. One glaring example is from Romania, where the journalists analyzed the TikTok accounts of 36 politicians who ran for the European Parliament, and found that between 20% and 42% of the videos they published contained exaggerations, fear-mongering messages, information taken out of context, or complete falsehoods.
“Romanian politicians sent to represent the country in the European Parliament are part of a network that amplifies disinformation, conspiracies, Russian propaganda and incites hatred on TikTok.” - Iulia Stanoiu from the Context (Romania) stemming from the Firehose of Falsehood Project.
The story from Hungary demonstrated how Russian propaganda uses both alternative and mainstream media to push government narratives. TikTok in Hungary was shown to disseminate Russian disinformation by using materials from the mainstream media - video excerpts cut from government media uploaded to TikTok. Meanwhile, the Czech article examined the role of TikTok for political activism and ideological extremism and how the promotion of the Russian world is connected with disinformation and conspiracies in the Czech Republic.
The Firehose of Falsehood project wrapped with the publication of another collaborative story on climate disinformation. Journalists at OCCRP membercenters will continue investigating disinformation and GACC will keep supporting collaborations between investigative journalism and civil society, furthering impact in the fight for the truth.
