More and more Bulgarians say disinformation is detrimental to society, according to Eurobarometer’s Bulgaria country report. 73% say fake news is a problem at a national level, but also for democracy as such. People in this country trust less in print media than they do in online publications and social networks. But it is the Internet that has grown to be a conduit of most of the false information.

More often than not, what lies behind disinformation are financial or political gains, making it an instrument aimed at misleading public opinion, an instrument used by large groups of people for their own ends. This phenomenon thrives best in times of crisis – like pandemic and war – with all kinds of examples mushrooming all around.

“In the pandemic we saw just how serious the effects of disinformation can be, how many lives it has cost that could have been saved by vaccination,” journalist Ivan Radoev says. “For Bulgaria this problem is particularly poignant – with the lowest vaccination rate and the highest mortality rate within the EU, and beyond. And now that there is war, we are not seeing disinformation wane, it is merely taking aim at a different target.”

In the conditions of crisis people tend to look for more sources of information, and that helps spread fake news. Tragedies from the war in Ukraine are presented as having been manipulated, there are insinuations that the killings in Bucha never happened, for example, that the whole thing was staged and what we are seeing are actors. “The country which is the aggressor is doing everything it can to justify its actions, to win over public opinion,” the journalist says.

A little over half of Bulgarians (52%) state they are certain they can spot fake news – the average percentage for the EU being 63. So, why is this country still a straggler in this respect?

“Take a look at the political environment in this country,” Ivan Radev says. “Members of parliament are spreading conspiracy theories and fake news on TV. Even journalists from leading media outlets are doing it, presenting disinformation as “the other point of view”. But a different point of view can never be legitimate when you are presenting a fake video and saying that that is the truth, and everyone else is lying.”

Social media help spread all kinds of news quickly, but we are apt to only share the information which has impacted us emotionally and which coincides with our own preconceptions. Yet that information is not always the truth.

“The best advice would be to take a critical approach,” Ivan Radoev says. “For every single thing we should be asking ourselves whether it is the truth, we should be looking for confirmation before we share it. If we don’t do that it will mean we are spreading disinformation as well.”

But it is not just media that is to blame for the onslaught of fake news and conspiracies in this country, the journalist adds. The diagnosis, he says, is to be found in the absence of “authority figures”, public figures of good repute whose opinion we value.

“Very often people lose all trust and believe no one because they each have a given interest,” the journalist says. “But while doubting every single information, all of a sudden they decide to believe some post on Facebook by a radical politician who is spreading conspiracies in an attempt to mislead. So, in the end, our attempts not to be deceived lead us to falling victim to the people who deceive us most. That is why our approach should be critical, but we should also use our judgement when we decide who can be an authority figure, and who does not deserve to be trusted.” 

Interview by Georgi Zhikov, BNR-Vidin

Editing by Diana Tsankova