Russian Propa­ganda Lever­aging Social Media and Coro­n­avirus in Georgia Ahead of Elections

As part of our project “Eastern Part­ner­ship 2.0” we publish a series of arti­cles about the three EU asso­ci­a­tion states. The authors from the region (Mikheil Benidze, Volodymyr Yermolenko, Victor Gotisan) analyze the impact of Russian soft power (fake news, media propa­ganda and infor­ma­tion warfare) in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova from a civil society perspective.

Over recent years, Russian inter­fer­ence in the elections and political processes of other countries has become a major topic of discus­sion and concern in the West. In Russia’s immediate neigh­bour­hood, however, this phenom­enon is nothing new. Evidence of the Russian Federation’s hostile attitudes towards its sovereign neigh­bours no longer comes as a surprise to anyone, given the Kremlin’s record of military aggres­sion, starting with its 2008 invasion of Georgia and occu­pa­tion of Abkhazia and Tskhin­vali region followed by the 2014 annex­a­tion of Crimea and occu­pa­tion of the Donbass region in Ukraine. However, along with direct military action, the Kremlin has been engaging in a contin­uous campaign of infor­ma­tion warfare aimed at under­mining democracy and desta­bil­ising the political situation in these countries. Georgia has been a primary target of Russian influence oper­a­tions, the Kremlin’s objec­tives there are detering the process of European and NATO inte­gra­tion, thus derailing Georgian foreign policy, and to increase political polar­i­sa­tion domestically.

As is the case elsewhere, the Russian propa­ganda campaign in Georgia seeks to exploit existing vulner­a­bil­i­ties in society. Tradi­tional values, religion and terri­to­rial conflicts are some of the issues that provide fertile ground for the manip­u­la­tion of public senti­ments in Georgia. To advance its interests, the Russian govern­ment supports various pro-Kremlin actors, such as political parties, media outlets, NGOs, and radical extremist groups, which often act as vehicles for spreading anti-Western narra­tives. The country’s most influ­en­tial insti­tu­tion – the Georgian Orthodox Church (GOC), is also subject to signif­i­cant Russian influence, and orthodox clergy often serve as sources or ampli­fiers of pro-Russian and anti-Western narra­tives. Not all of these actors have direct and open links with Russia though, and some may act as natural ampli­fiers or “useful idiots”, contributing to the overall pro-Kremlin ecosystem of soft power and propa­ganda that thrives on conspiracy theories and divisive narratives.

A Media Devel­op­ment Foun­da­tion (MDF) study of anti-Western propa­ganda observed that anti-Western narra­tives take a three-tiered approach: sowing fear, instilling despair, and offering alter­na­tive solutions. According to the MDF’s report, anti-Western propa­ganda uses the danger of antag­o­nising Russia, the risk of war and of the loss of terri­to­ries, as well as threat of a loss of identity to promote fears in Georgian society. The main messages used to instil despair focus on scep­ti­cism about the will­ing­ness on the part of the EU and NATO to support Georgia and portrayals of liberal decline in the West, as well as aiming to fuel mistrust towards insti­tu­tions and under­mining belief in Georgian sover­eignty. Against this backdrop, direct dialogue with Russia and political and military neutrality are offered as a solution for terri­to­rial problems and a pro-Russian orien­ta­tion presented as a way to protect Georgian identity and ensure economic stability.

In its propa­ganda ecosystem, Russia has relied heavily on Facebook – the most popular social network in Georgia. Pro-Kremlin actors have been inten­sively setting up and using social media infra­struc­ture to spread disin­for­ma­tion and false news. In the context of its social media moni­toring, the Inter­na­tional Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) – a Georgian election and democracy watchdog –uncovered organised networks on Facebook that operated in a coor­di­nated manner to arti­fi­cially amplify and dissem­i­nate content from the pro-Russian outlets News-Front and Sputnik.

News-Front, an overt and aggres­sive vehicle of Russian disin­for­ma­tion, was estab­lished in occupied Crimea in 2014 and launched in the Georgian language in October 2019, becoming engaged in infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions on Facebook shortly there­after. Specif­i­cally, the ISFED’s inves­ti­ga­tion found that “News-Front attempted to instigate antag­o­nism and aggres­sion among Georgian Facebook users, dividing the society, creating political polar­iza­tion [...] and employing a range of tactics to spread anti-Western, pro-Russian messages.” As part of its operation, News-Front used fake accounts that shared News-Front content in a covert, organised and targeted manner to at least 31 open Facebook groups with a combined audience of over half a million. Apart from promoting anti-Western and pro-Russian content, this network targeted both pro-govern­ment and pro-oppo­si­tion Facebook groups “with tailored provoca­tive messages which may have served the purpose of dividing the society into two camps and trig­gering confrontation”.

It is probably no coin­ci­dence that News-Front’s Georgian service was launched one year ahead of Georgia’s October 2020 parlia­men­tary elections. It is highly likely that inau­thentic Facebook network was being set up to influence pre-election discourse and further fuel polar­i­sa­tion in Georgia, where political debate is already very charged. However, the start of the coro­n­avirus pandemic and subse­quent global health crisis provided an opportune moment for News-Front to launch an infor­ma­tion offensive in Georgia. News-Front and its Facebook network were quickly mobilised to spread disin­for­ma­tion, conspir­a­cies and anti-Western messages in Georgia. COVID-related Russian disin­for­ma­tion in Georgia attempted to distort reality and promote the view that Georgia should distance itself from the West and covertly attacked state insti­tu­tions and measures taken to contain the virus. Once again, Russian disin­for­ma­tion attempted to discredit the US-supported Richard Lugar Centre for Public Health Research (Lugar Lab) of Georgia’s National Center for Disease Control, accusing it of involve­ment in the spread of the virus and under­mining trust itsef­forts to combat the coro­n­avirus outbreak. Kremlin has long fuelled conspiracy theories relating to Lugar Lab, even accusing it of producing biolog­ical weapons. News-Front also exploited the GOC’s reluc­tance to limit church services and desire to continue the use of a shared spoon in its communion ritual despite public fears about the spread of the virus, portraying the COVID-related restric­tions as an attack on the Orthodox Church and Eucharist practice and urged believers to attend church services to receive communion with a shared spoon.

The ISFED also found that, like News-Front, another Russian media outlet, Sputnik, also used fake Facebook accounts to arti­fi­cially amplify content in Georgia. In this case, however, the content being shared was not political but related to a wide range of general-interest topics such as tabloid news, fashion, cuisine, tourism, horo­scopes, gardening, agri­cul­ture, emigrant commu­ni­ties, etc. Combined reach of the 11 pages and 41 groups Sputnik used to spread such content was nearly 2 million Facebook users These covert oper­a­tions may have been aimed at estab­lishing Sputnik as a reliable source of infor­ma­tion on various general issues, driving up traffic to its website, and, poten­tially, collecting the personal data of users by asking website visitors permis­sion to allow noti­fi­ca­tions from Sputnik.

Facebook removed global News-Front infra­struc­ture from its platform in April 2020, banning the organ­i­sa­tion from re-estab­lishing itself on the network. Fake accounts asso­ci­ated with Sputnik found by ISFED were also removed at around the same time. This may have limited some of the capa­bil­i­ties of the Russian disin­for­ma­tion infra­struc­ture on Facebook ahead of Georgia’s parlia­men­tary elections, however these inves­ti­ga­tions demon­strate that Russia is and will be exploiting capa­bil­i­ties of social media to influence public discourse and elections in Georgia. It appears that indi­vid­uals related to News-Front are already attempting to establish an alter­na­tive presence on Facebook. However, alongside the outlets that are offi­cially affil­i­ated with the Kremlin, there are numerous other “influence assets” on Facebook that are spreading divisive narra­tives on value-based issues similar to those that Russian propa­ganda has exploited elsewhere in Europe.

During the 2018 pres­i­den­tial elections in Georgia, the ISFED’s moni­toring found 52 Facebook pages that spread nation­al­istic, xeno­phobic, anti-liberal, homo­phobic, Islam­o­phobic and anti-Western narra­tives. By 2020, some of those pages had also started operating with complex inau­thentic networks – a self-proclaimed “alter­na­tive news source”, Alt-Info, is pushing anti-Western propa­ganda, including the ideas of Kremlin ideol­o­gist Alexandr Dugin, through a coor­di­nated network of Facebook pages and groups. The pro-Russian party Alliance of Patriots also seems to be running a coor­di­nated network on Facebook.

Georgia’s 2020 elections represent a key milestone for the country’s demo­c­ratic devel­op­ment and are likely to determine how ambitious Georgia will be in pursuing its declared path of demo­c­ratic trans­for­ma­tion and Western inte­gra­tion moving forward. There is no doubt that the Kremlin will use all of its soft power and propa­ganda infra­struc­ture to influence these elections and public discourse. Given the ongoing pandemic, the already polarised political landscape and signif­i­cant domestic disin­for­ma­tion and discred­iting campaigns that govern­ment proxies and some oppo­si­tion actors are conducting against one another, the infor­ma­tion envi­ron­ment will be the key challenge of these elections. Handling this challenge will be a major test for Georgia’s government.

Mikheil Benidze is current Senior Advisor and former Executive Director at the Inter­na­tional Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED). ISFED is a major election observer and democracy watchdog in Georgia that has operated since 1995.