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Infodemic: Disinformation in the Czech Republic- PSSI Report

The Prague Security Studies Institute (PSSI) has completed a study of the effects of COVID-19 on the disinformation ecosystem in the Czech Republic using the >versus< tool. PSSI studied the ways in which COVID-19 has been used to drive certain conspiracy theories and false narratives on different social media platforms. The results of the study can be found in the attached document.

Lithuania General Election 2020 Media Monitoring

The second round of the Lithuanian general election concluded this past Oct 25th, 2020 resulting in the center-right Homeland Union- Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD) returning to power after 8 years. In the run-up to the elections, the Vilnius Institute for Policy Analysis, with support from the International Republican Institute’s Beacon Project, conducted media monitoring of online news portals to identify potentially disruptive narratives being spread in the media environment.

Serbian Elections Media Monitoring Analysis

Extensive online media monitoring ahead of the June 2020 Serbian parliamentary elections exposed an overwhelming imbalance in media coverage of political actors. Government officials received significantly more netural to positive coverage by monitored media, while opposition figures were marginalized and when covered the prevailing tone was negative. President Aleksandar Vučić was by far the most frequent and most positive actor presented in the media, multiple times more so then the next most frequent - Prime Minister Ana Brnabić. While the majority of monitored articles were neutral, monitoring findings demonstrated a substantial lack of contentious topics. Most notable was the lack of coverage of contentious topics during the state of emergency that following the initial Covid-19 outbreak in Serbia. Online media did little to encourage informed debate ahead of the elections. Rather than asking questions media largely turned to promoting and amplifying government messages and retaliation against dissenting or critical voices. For the complete study download the document attached.

Online Media-Monitoring of Migration Narratives in the Czech Republic and Slovakia

This case study is based on results of media monitoring conducted by IRI’s Beacon Project between September 1 and November 31, 2018, during which Czech and Slovak media produced 1,391 articles about migration. This media monitoring sought to gain an understanding of which migration narratives are disseminated, capture the dynamics of the identified narratives and understand the susceptibility to certain narratives by various demographic groups.

Vaccination and Disinformation in the Czech Information Environment: Partner Publication

We are in the era of Web 2.0, where everybody can easily spread and promote their own messages and, via social networks and other communication channels, reach a significant number of people. Despite the many positives technological progress has brought, problems with information overload have emerged as well. When it comes to health care and the way the public gets its information the Internet has become one of the first sources people resort to.