NGOs and think-tanks to create an IT platform to identify pro-Russian propaganda narratives on social media in the context of the war in Ukraine

Oana Popescu, director of the NGO Global Focus, told G4Media.ro on Friday that she has launched an initiative, together with several representatives of other NGOs and think-tanks, to create an IT platform to identify pro-Russian propaganda narratives on social networks in the context of the war in Ukraine. She said she had asked the government and ministries for a list of key topics to consider.

„It’s 100% an NGO initiative, us and other NGOs – Nicoleta Fotiade from Media Wise, Ionuț Codreanu from Active Watch, Alex Văleanu from True Story Project and others. We started this initiative against the backdrop of what we have seen in the past few days: the hysteria of iodine pills, gas stations queues, passport queues. After calling the government and telling them that strategic communication is important, telling them to communicate pro-actively, we decided to create a tool that would show them on a daily basis which narratives have daily traction, something measurable, concrete on social media”, said Oana Popescu.

Mircea Toma, a member of the National Audiovisual Commission(CNA), the government’s communications regulator, and founder of the NGO Active Watch, who joined this initiative, told G4Media that „it is a private initiative of a non-governmental organisation, Global Focus, which has had and has outperformed analyses on fakenews in the digital space. They have an artificial intelligence app and it harvests from Facebook posts, processes them and detects fake nes. In the context of the high volume of fake news, a lot of Putinist propaganda themes have emerged and we find them here in Romania. This group has asked for help from government institutions to feed them keywords that might be relevant. They also asked the government for this information in the context of the discussions about refugees. It is absolutely informal. You can see how the topic has exploded in energy. That’s why they went to the government.”

How will the NGO coalition work with the government? „The only partnership we asked for from the government was this: if we do this, is there a chance you will take our recommendations into account? We can show our monitoring. Are we likely to be taken into consideration? They said yes, they were open to collaborate, and we asked them for key terms to use in our algorithm. What key terms to introduce, as we asked from other NGOs and individual experts. We will rank the key terms and choose what we think is relevant, based on our experience,” Oana Popescu told G4Media.ro.

Dan Cărbunaru, the government spokesperson, did not respond to G4Media questions by the time of publishing.

Profit.ro had previously reported that „a working group set up by the Department for Emergency Situations (DSU), joined by the Romanian Government, together with the CNA and several NGOs, is preparing an IT platform that will scan the online media, as well as blogs and social networks, to find „fake news”, sources of disinformation and propaganda in the context of the conflict in Ukraine”. According to the proposals submitted by the Government, the word combinations considered possible disinformation and Russian propaganda are those that would associate, in the same text, the Government, the Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă or the President Klaus Iohannis with a context of „corruption” or „incompetence”, having as disinformation marker expressions such as ” scum” or „theft”. Other „disinformation markers” proposed by the Government are „lack of consensus”, „traditions”, „spirituality”, „enlargement”, if associated, as the case may be, with „subjects” such as NATO, Romania, Brussels, Ursula, Stoltenberg, Geoană, and others.

Asked by G4Media what the government’s contribution to this initiative is, Oana Popescu said that „there is no government funding. The government will not be the only beneficiary – sometimes it will be the CNA, the private sector, employers’ associations, we will pass it on to those we think it concerns. There is no DSU as initiator, they were the first and most open to discuss with us because we are together in a group with dozens of NGOs for the refugee crisis”.

„The CNA is appearing because I am in this group of NGOs. We notified the CNA about the initiative and the CNA said they would be happy to receive a list of topics that are making waves on Facebook. It’s a good initiative that has put the generators of lies on alert,” added Mircea Toma.

Translated from Romanian