Issues related to developments in northern Kosovo, the Association of Serb-majority Municipalities, and Kosovo-Serbia relations continued to be topics on which misinformation was spread throughout January.
Although fewer in number compared to previous months, these topics still remain ranked first in terms of use for misinformation.
A new topic that was used for the first time as a subject for misinformation was the one related to the floods in Kosovo. This proves once again that the most current topics continue to be used for the production and distribution of misinformation.
Disinformation, as a form of misinformation, continued to top the list this month, while dubious portals were the main generator of information disorder.
Kurti and the Kosovo Government also remained the two most talked about actors in misinformation articles.
These data emerged from the monitoring report that presents the state of misinformation for January 2023 in content related to Kosovo, based on data provided by the fact-checking platform – hibrid.info. The report was conceived by the fact-checking platform hibrid.info, part of the Kosovar NGO “Action for Democratic Society” (ADS) and supported by the American foundation “National Endowment for Democracy” (NED) within the framework of the project “Promoting Objective Journalism and Combating Disinformation”.
Monitoring measurements for January 2023 have shown that the media have distributed the most misinformation articles that have received disinformation ratings with 34%, followed by the clickbait category with 25% and publications rated as fraud with 14%. Publications rated in the “Disinformation” category have mostly dealt with political and security topics, but also social issues, sports and weather in Kosovo, emphasizing relations between Kosovo and Serbia, northern Kosovo and misinformation regarding the Serbian community in Kosovo, published mainly by dubious portals and much less by real media. In the “Clickbait” category, misinformation articles have been distributed by the Kosovo media, in the social and black chronicle fields, which deal with social assistance, financial support, misinformation about various deaths and murders, floods in Kosovo, etc. Meanwhile, ratings in the "Fraud" category have been received for publications in the social field and various advertisements with fraudulent purposes, published mainly by dubious portals.
The topics most frequently used by the media for the creation and distribution of misinformation content are Kosovo's relations with Serbia, northern Kosovo, the floods in Kosovo during January, several murders that occurred outside Kosovo with the claim that they had occurred inside the country, municipalities with a Serbian majority, etc. Such publications were distributed by dubious portals and local and regional media, all of which were in Serbian. Analysis of data on a weekly basis shows that, during the first week of January, the main topics were Kosovo footballers, deaths and murders with 13% each, followed by Kosovo-Serbia relations and northern Kosovo with 6% each; in the second week of January, political topics prevailed, such as northern Kosovo with 11% and municipalities with a Serbian majority with 6%; During the third week of January, there were the most misinforming publications about Kosovo-Serbia relations with 31% and about the floods in Kosovo with 19%; even in the last week of January 2023, political topics took the main place, such as relations between Kosovo and Serbia with 22%, the north of Kosovo and EU membership with 7% each. Meanwhile, the largest number of publications were distributed in the social field with 25%, which is followed by articles with political content with 22% and the security field with 16%.
Compared to the previous monitoring months, during January 2023, suspicious portals have published the most misinformation articles of 52% compared to real media of 48%. Of the real media, local portals have published the most articles with 52%, followed by regional media, all of which are Serbian with 44% and from the combination of local / regional media 4% of publications have been published. Local media have distributed the most articles that have been assessed as clickbait for the black chronicle, social issues, health and weather, while they have not had any reports in the political field. Meanwhile, regional media, namely Serbian ones, have created misinformation content about Kosovo in the categories of manipulation of facts, unverified content, disinformation and conspiracy theories about the north of Kosovo, municipalities with a Serbian majority and relations between Kosovo and Serbia.
The most talked about institution by the media, in their misinforming reports during the month of January 2023, is the Government of Kosovo for socio-economic issues, which is followed by the National Institute of Public Health of Kosovo and the Office for Kosovo in the Serbian Government. Among the personalities, the most talked about this month is Prime Minister Albin Kurti for political and security topics, distributed by dubious portals and media in Serbian.