Flash Report The story behind On February 15, 2015, three Russian nationals arrived in Sofia, Bulgaria and booked stays at two local hotels, albeit with an unusual request; the men wanted rooms with a view, but not of the city skylines or Mount Vitosha. They all wanted views of the same parking garage –…
The conference will take place as a hybrid event with main venue in Sofia, Bulgaria and via Zoom. Check the conference agenda for more information Join us next week to discuss how we can overcome vulnerabilities in Southeast Europe related to foreign authoritarian influence and the spread of disinformation by developing the institutional, regulatory and…
Flash Report Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has once again highlighted the risks associated with the EU’s considerable dependence on conventional energy supplies from Russia. Although the current energy crisis began before the war, it was exacerbated by Russia in an effort to blackmail the EU and its members to abandon their common energy…
Flash Report Author: Gloria Trifonova, Svetoslav Malinov, Todor Galev, CSD The Kremlin’s extensive and methodical disinformation campaign against Ukraine began long before its invasion on February 24, 2022. And it has only grown in complexity and scale since. Bulgaria is exceptionally susceptible to the Kremlin’s web of (dis-)information influence, one of the many tools within…
CSD, together with several other organizations, including the AEJ, organized a press conference to talk about the Kremlin’s pro-Russian disinformation and anti-democratic messages in Bulgaria in the context of the information war. According to T. Galev from CSD, when disinformation or propaganda is spread on purpose, we can classify the situation as an information war.…
Although Russia’s economic presence in Europe has been declining in last two years, Bulgaria alongside with Serbia are the countries most inclined to safeguard and showcase pro-Russian disinformation and propaganda narratives and sentiments in Southeastern Europe. They serve as key hubs of economic, political and informational influence for the Kremlin and a base of operations…
The FENCE initiative, supported by the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), offers small-scale grants to boost fact-checking and debunking activities in Southeast Europe, with a special focus on Bulgaria, Greece, and Romania. The initiative’s aim is to reveal the Kremlin’s disinformation and propaganda narratives being spread across the region, and in particular those used by domestic actors in national political…
Factcheck.bg is the first fact-checking platform in Bulgaria, endorsed by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in the USA. Factcheck.bg was launched in June 2021 as an initiative of the Association of European Journalists to counter the growing amount of misinformation in the Bulgarian media environment. In just over…
Countering Russian disinformation and propaganda requires not only deterrence, but also a long-term strategy of media literacy training and awareness campaigns for the general public. In the short term, the creation of a state body to monitor the media environment and combat disinformation, similar to the existing ones in the Western countries, would help. Another…
As part of its ongoing research on disinformation and foreign influence, CSD is monitoring the disinformation narratives related to the situation in Kazakhstan that appeared in Bulgarian News Front’s content during the first half of January 2022. The outlet published nearly 100 articles referring to Kazakhstan out of total of 350 articles in the period…
