Wrote: Fatbardh Dema
Before and during the election campaign in Kosovo, a large amount of misinformation about the elections was published on the social media TikTok.
After the end of the election process, hibrid.info, during regular monitoring of these TikTok accounts, noticed that some of them are no longer active (closed).
Over the past few months, these accounts have published misinformation related to the parliamentary elections in Kosovo, the parties, or their leaders.
Hibrid.info has found that of these accounts, eleven of them no longer exist on TikTok.
List of these accounts that have spread misinformation about the elections: democraticparty88, mesentery, _albinkurti, cr7shqip, albiin_kurti, dedekt1v1, albin_kurti2, interesting_facts_ks, toro…06, focus.day and kingalbinkurti.
The account “partiademokratike88” has published three pieces of misinformation regarding the elections which have been assessed by hibrid.info as fake news and fraud. (see here, here and here)
"Mezatarum" is the account that published a poll for the February 9 elections, which after fact-checking by hibrid.info turned out to be false. (see here)
The account with the name “_albinkurti” had published content with the claim “Latest news: Opposition sends flag placement to constitutional court”. Although it is not specified, based on the image used in this claim, it is understood that it is about the placement of the flag in the facilities of Kosovo institutions in the north of the country. After fact-checking by hibrid.info, this content was assessed as “Fake news”. (see here)
A content published by the account “cr7shqip”, through an image showing Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Albin Kurti, and Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan, claimed that Turkey would donate a helicopter to Kosovo. After checking the facts, hibrid.info has confirmed that the image is fabricated and that there is no information published in credible sources that proves such a claim. This content was assessed as “Fake News”. (see here)
Two false statements claiming to have been made by the LDK and PDK prime ministerial candidates were published by the account “albiin_kurti”. (see here and here)
Two fake polls claiming to have been conducted by Americans were published by the account “dedekt1v1”. (see here)
Hibrid.info covered two publications by the account “kingalbinkurti” at the end of December. One was the claim that analyst Dardan Gashi said that “Albin Kurti is the only one who has never given up” and the other that Agim Veliu said that “LDK has no chance of defeating Albin Kurti”. Both were assessed as fake news. (see here and here)
In a claim by the account “fokusi.dites” that was handled by hibrid.info, it was falsely claimed that “Albin Kurti has spoken about forgetting the past with the Serbs.” (see here)
The account “albin_kurti2” claimed in a post that a poll had been conducted regarding the parliamentary elections of February 9, which showed the Vetëvendosje Movement as the first with 76%. After fact-checking by hibrid.info, this poll turned out to be fake. (see here)
Through a video, the account “toro…06” featuring the President of Kosovo, Vjosa Osmani, was claimed to be supporting the LVV for the February 9 elections. However, after verifying the facts, it was confirmed that the video is old, made four years ago (before the 2021 parliamentary elections), when she was a candidate for MP in the ranks of the Guxo List, which at that time was running in the elections as part of the LVV list. This content was assessed as “Disinformation”. (see here)
Over the past few months (November, December, January) TikTok has seen an increase in the spread of misinformation, becoming a worrying source of inaccurate and manipulative information.
Misinformation Monitoring Report for November – 2024 shows that across social media types, TikTok has had the greatest dominance in the distribution of misinformation content, with a percentage of 57%.
Disinformation Monitoring Report for December – 2024 shows that TikTok led the way with 55% of the misinformation content that was shared.
Misinformation Monitoring Report for January – 2025, shows that the percentage of misinformation content on TikTok increased to 67% (12% more than in December).