Prepared by: Festim Rizanaj
The arming of the KSF, the Israel-Hamas conflict, and incidents in Serb-majority settlements are the main topics about which he was misinformed during May 2024.
Based on the findings and treatment of misinformation content during the month of May, it turns out that the most misinformation content was published in the field of security. Misinformation from the security field is followed by misinformation content from politics and social issues, which were most often used to misinform.
As a result of finding and addressing 73 pieces of misinformation published in real media, social media, and dubious portals, deceptive content and disinformation share dominance in the misinformation exosphere, followed by unverified content and clickbait articles.
Among the 11 pieces of misinformation where 6 institutions were mentioned, the Kosovo Security Force (KSF) and the Office for Kosovo in the Government of Serbia are the ones that have prevailed.
The Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti (3 misinformation) and the Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama (3 misinformation) are the two most discussed figures in the 24 misinformation content where the personalities were discussed.
These data came from monitoring report which presents the state of misinformation for the month of May 2024 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”.
In finding and handling 73 pieces of content during May 2024, it was found that misleading content and disinformation were the two main categories of misinformation, each with 19%. This was due to the large number of topics from the political and social fields that were assessed as disinformation or hoaxes. These categories are followed by unverified content with 16%, clickbait with 12%, and conspiracy theories and fake news with 10% each.
After the officialization of the purchase of “Bayraktar” drones from Turkey, speculations about other arms supplies, including heavy artillery such as helicopters, tanks and aircraft, began to circulate on social media. Unfounded claims about the supply of the KSF dominated the misinformation in May. Meanwhile, the Israel-Hamas conflict, which began on October 7, 2023, continued to be an important source of misinformation, with much unverified content and disinformation. Also, incidents in Serbian settlements in Kosovo were used by some channels to create conspiracy theories.
Mainly unverified content, disinformation and fake news on topics such as the arming of the KSF, Serb-majority settlements, the Israel-Hamas conflict, the north, the arming of the Kosovo Police, etc., has led the security field to lead during the month of May with 29%. Security is followed by a variety of topics from the political field, including EU measures towards Kosovo, recognition of Kosovo, the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue, etc., which have been assessed as disinformation and fraud and have been published on social media and traditional media. Deceptive content about granting loans, products that claim to cure certain diseases, the price of bread, employment opportunities, etc., from the social field, have been assessed mainly as fraud and disinformation published on social media and have been ranked third in the categorization of fields.
As in the previous month (April), misinformation published on social media continued to dominate this month (May), with a slight increase of 1% (from 66% in April 2024 to 67% in May 2024). This can be explained by the fact that all misleading content and fake news, as well as a significant portion of disinformation and unverified content, are published on social media. During May, 57% of misinformation content on social media was published on Facebook, while 33% on TikTok, and 10% on other platforms (X, Instagram, Youtube, Telegram).
In the 24 pieces of misinformation where personalities were mentioned, the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, was mentioned in 3 cases, while the Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama, in 3 cases. Kurti has been accused of conspiratorial and false claims by the Serbian-language media, including the false offering of Serbian temples in Kosovo to the Vatican and the claim that he is criminalizing the northern part of the country. Meanwhile, Rama has been accused of false statements and a distorted position regarding his position regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which was interpreted as a rebuke of the Albanian Prime Minister to the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. It was also falsely claimed that Rama said Serbia will never recognize Kosovo; and there was disinformation in Serbian on Telegram that Edi Rama held a rally in Greece without the consent of the Greek authorities.