The fact-checking platform Hibrid.info, part of the organization "Action for Democratic Society" (ADS), has published its third annual report on the state of information disorder in Kosovo.
The report, supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), aims to reflect the situation of the spread of misinformation in Kosovo during the period July 2024 - June 2025, in Albanian and other languages for and around Kosovo, based on empirical data collected from daily monitoring of the platform.
Festim Rizanaj, researcher at Hibrid.info, presented the findings of the report, which consists of three key parts: analysis of misinformation content in Albanian and other languages (Serbian, English and others), verification of statements and promises of public officials, and comparison of the report's data with the previous annual period (July 2023 - June 2024).
This report identified different categories of misinformation content. Researcher Rizanaj said that in Albanian, the most frequent were “fake news” (25%), “misinformation” and “scams” (15% each), while “clickbait” accounted for 11%. According to him, these contents increased significantly during the parliamentary elections on February 9, 2025.
Meanwhile, the report's findings show that misinformation content in the Serbian language is dominated by "conspiracy theories" (34%) and "disinformation" (17%), focused on security and political topics, especially developments in northern Kosovo and the parliamentary elections.
Researcher Rizanaj revealed that 74% of misinformation content in Albanian was distributed on social networks, mainly on Facebook and TikTok, confirming these platforms as the main sources of misinformation. On the other hand, he said that 65% of content in Serbian was distributed on traditional media, with Telegram being the most used social network in this segment (43%).
According to the report's findings, the most targeted topics of misinformation in Albanian were the parliamentary elections (18%), the arming of the Kosovo Security Force (KSF) (5%) and tragic events (3%). In Serbian, it is said that the content focused on developments in northern Kosovo (18%), elections (10%), Serb-majority settlements and incidents in the Ibër-Lepenc canal (4%).
Rizanaj, during the presentation, announced that the areas most affected by misinformation content in the Albanian language are: politics (45%), security (20%) and social topics (16%). Meanwhile, he said that content in the Serbian language is focused on politics (38%), security (32%), and partly on social and cultural issues.
The Hibrid.info researcher emphasized that the report concludes that sensitive political periods and security topics continue to be the main targets for disinformation actors, with social networks remaining the most used means for spreading this content in Kosovo.
The report's findings were discussed with panelists: professor at the Department of Journalism at the University of Pristina, Alban Zeneli, the president of the Association of Kosovo Journalists (AGK), Xhemajl Rexha, and the former president of the Independent Media Commission (IMC), Jeton Mehmeti.
Referring to the data of the report highlighting the increase in misinformation on TikTok, Professor Alban Zeneli assessed that this platform has significantly influenced the country's information space. "It is significant how TikTok as a platform has taken over the Kosovo audience and consequently has also taken over the space for misinformation, disinformation and other forms of information disorder in general. This is also due to the fact that the majority of TikTok users in Kosovo are young people. Being young and lacking the skills to judge the content they read, or more precisely, see on TikTok, this possibility of the impact of forms of information disorder on young people becomes greater," he said.
Assessing the impact of misinformation, Xhemajl Rexha from AGK stressed that the consequences go beyond fake news. “One of the main considerations at this moment is of course that the publication of fake news, disinformation, leads to a lot of hate speech, that is, to a high level of hate speech against those who are the targets of this disinformation, which can be different social categories. Often, unfortunately, these are the marginalized categories of society in Kosovo, but a concern especially in the last year for AGK and for the journalistic community is that journalists themselves, in fact we, have been the target of such campaigns from different pages on social media,” said Rexha.
Meanwhile, speaking about the importance of media regulation in preventing disinformation, especially during election periods, former IMC Chairman Jeton Mehmeti said: "Last year, while we were in official duty at the Independent Media Commission, we knew that this year, 2025, would be an election year and the attempt to have misinformation, disinformation, fake news is very great, especially due to the fact that 2025 would be the year for parliamentary elections, local elections and perhaps even for other extraordinary elections. Therefore, together with the media and civil society, we built a special regulation on the obligations of the media during elections in order to be correct, to report fairly and accurately. And that regulation, among other things, mentions an element, which also has some criteria on polls that televisions must adhere to if they wish to publish them, seeing that in your publication you mentioned that polls have often been fabricated, of course through social networks distributed and have been the basis of disinformation.
Other participants, including representatives of public institutions, media, international partners, etc., also made important contributions to the discussion on the state of information disorder in Kosovo.
Link to the report presentation: https://www.facebook.com/hibridinfo/videos/765353152503218
Download here the full report in three languages.