Wrote: Fatbardh Dema
Several Albanian-language Facebook pages, which had been inactive for a long time, were reactivated shortly before the start of the election campaign.
These pages began publishing a large number of posts with political content, focusing mainly on the parliamentary elections of February 9. The sudden activation of these pages and the intensification of their activity during the election period raised doubts about their intentions and influence on public opinion.
Fact-checking platform Hibrid.info, through its daily monitoring, managed to identify these pages and analyze the content they shared. Most of their posts were related to the political topics of the campaign. (read the article) here)
But, what is the current activity of these pages and what content do they post?
A concrete example of this change is the page “Politicsforeign.com". After the end of the electoral process, this page has changed the topic of the content it distributes, moving from political topics to lighter and more entertaining ones.
Instead of political posts, this page has started to publish mainly visual content, with a special emphasis on videos that are excerpted from the television show Big Brother Vip Albania, a well-known reality show that has received a lot of attention in the Albanian media. As of the writing of this article (March 26), this site mainly publishes videos and content related to this program.
Another notable phenomenon has also occurred with two other pages, "In Time”And“New Kosovo", which were also reactivated before the February 9 elections, but which have significantly changed their activity after the election period. After the elections, these pages have significantly reduced the number of posts and have also changed the topic of the content they distribute.
Page "In Time” has been more moderate in its activity after February 9, publishing only 7 posts so far (March 26), and they have all had content related to political topics. This shows that, although it was reactivated during the election period, there was a noticeable decrease in activity after the end of the electoral process.
While the page "New Kosovo” had a higher activity after the end of the electoral process. From February 9 to March 26, this page posted more than 40 different pieces of content. It covered diverse topics, including political aspects, but also other content such as photographs, videos with social themes, as well as visuals accompanied by musical backgrounds.
Unlike various Facebook pages that changed the topic or reduced the number of posts after the elections, a different phenomenon has occurred with TikTok accounts. Hibrid.info has discovered that more than ten TikTok accounts were closed after the end of the election process.
These accounts published misinformation before and during the election campaign. (see article here)
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