The Kosovar audience, mainly the Albanian-speaking one, continues to face misinformative content, which it is consuming through social media.
The issues related to the developments in the north of Kosovo, with the football players of Albanian origin in the Swiss national team, with frauds for fictional stories about requests for love relationships, events of changes during the development of the world championship "Qatar 2022", municipalities with a Serbian majority in Kosovo, were the topics on which misinformative content was created for the Kosovar audience during the month of December 2022.
This was announced by the monitoring report that presents the state of misinformation for the month of December 2022 in the contents related to Kosovo, based on the data provided by the fact-checking platform - hibrid.info. The report was devised 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 project "Promotion of Objective Journalism and Fighting Disinformation".
Monitoring data for the month of December 2022 shows that publications with misinformation content received the most misinformation ratings at 30%, followed by clickbait categories at 23% and unverified content at 14%. In the "Misinformation" category, misinformation in the field of security, politics, social and sports about the developments in the north of Kosovo and misinformation about the Albanian football players in the Swiss national team, published by the Serbian media and by the local/regional media, prevailed. Articles that dealt with social, political and security topics, visa liberalization, the north of Kosovo, etc., received "Clickbait" evaluations. Misinformative articles in this category have been published by Kosovo media. In the "Unverified Content" category, misinformative articles in the field of sports, politics, security and social media from dubious portals and local media have been published.
The topics that have been used most often for the distribution of misinformation articles are those related to the recent events in the north of Kosovo, with football players of Albanian origin in the Swiss national team, with frauds for fictional stories about requests for love relationships, events and changes during the development of the "Qatar 2022" world championship, municipalities with a Serbian majority in Kosovo, etc. These publications are distributed by local, regional, local/regional media and questionable portals. Monitoring the data on a weekly basis proves that, during the first week of December, the main topics were Albanian footballers in the Swiss national team with 42%, followed by articles about the north of Kosovo with 17%; in the second week of December, the north of Kosovo dominated with 46% and the world championship "Qatar 2022" with 15%; during the third week of December, there were political and security developments in the north of Kosovo with 21%, followed by the liberalization of visas and the conviction of the former commander of the KLA, Salih Mustafa, by the Special Court of The Hague with 7% each of them; even in the last week of December, misinformative articles about the north of Kosovo took the first place with 41%, as well as Kosovo-Serbia relations and Serbian-majority municipalities with 6% each. As noted, the main areas on which articles based on misinformation are published are security with 34%, social areas with 23%, sports with 20% and politics with 18%.
During the month of December, real media have published more misinformative articles with 57% compared to dubious portals with 43%. Measurements from the monthly monitoring have highlighted that, of the real media, the local media have published 50% of misinforming articles, the regional media 31% and the combination of local/regional media have published 19% of the articles. Local media have distributed articles in the categories of clickbait, unverified content, misinformation and fake news that have dealt with sports and social topics, while significantly less those of security and politics. On the contrary, the regional media, mainly those in the Serbian language, have published mostly about the field of security in their claims without concrete facts about the developments in the north of Kosovo during the month of December 2022. Even the local / regional media have published misinformative content in the field of security and politics, in which the main topic is the north of Kosovo.
Kosovo security institutions have been the most talked about this month in relation to the events in northern Kosovo. The Kosovo Police is the most talked about by the Serbian-language media, followed by the Kosovo Security Force. Meanwhile, the most talked about personality this month in the context of developments in northern Kosovo by the Serbian media is Prime Minister Albin Kurti. These publications by the Serbian media are not based on facts and distort the truth in their reporting on the institutions and persons discussed.
Link to the full report for December (2022): https://hibrid.info/raporti-monitorues-i-keqinformimit-per-muajin-dhjetor/