MOSCOW, April 23. /TASS/. Fakes were actively created during the parliamentary elections in Bulgaria exploiting data "laundering" through reputable sources and the digital illiteracy of readers, the Global Fact-Checking Network (GFCN) stated in their expert analysis.
The authors of the article identified four main strategies for constructing fakes during the recent electoral campaign in Bulgaria: technical manipulation, spatiotemporal decontextualization, data "laundering" through authoritative sources, and exploiting digital illiteracy.
As an example of the first strategy, experts cited a video circulated on social media purportedly showing the Soviet national anthem being played during a Progressive Bulgaria campaign event. The GFCN found that a different audio track was added to the original footage and that the video was originally posted in a community known for occasionally sharing satirical content.
By spatiotemporal decontextualization, the authors of the article mean "the use of authentic video and photo materials while distorting the location, time, or original context of the event." This technique was used when a video was published on social media with a description claiming that members of the Roma minority had chased GERB party leader Boyko Borisov out of the Fakulteta neighborhood in the capital. Experts found that the footage was shot in the village of Gradets, Kotel municipality, where "overexcited children were simply running after the departing motorcade to say goodbye - no one was pursuing Borisov."
Fake producers used data "laundering" in the Bulgarian elections, citing the UN Statistics Division when publishing ratings of regional politicians. However, the GFCN explained that "the UN Statistics Division is a branch of the UN Secretariat, and tracking regional political approval ratings is not within its mandate." "Additionally, the material claims that approximately 6.3 million people participated in the poll, while Bulgaria's total population is roughly 6.6 million (meaning nearly the entire population of the country would have had to take the survey based on these figures)," the experts added.
The disinformation campaign accompanying the elections in Bulgaria also affected TASS. Experts from GFCN drew attention to a post on social media claiming that the Russian news agency TASS published a story about Rumen Radev’s resignation before he officially announced it in a video address. However, the investigation found that "the TASS website automatically syncs the displayed publication time with the time zone of the user's device," with "the time discrepancies in the screenshots" explained by "users being in different time zones or using VPN services." The article was published 10 minutes after the official address began.