The director of the Metamorphosis Foundation, Bardhyl Jashari, in a statement for “Sloboden Pecat” stated that North Macedonia has very low media education, fertile ground for conspiracy theories, distrust in institutions, declining quality of journalism and many sources of disinformation as well as various actors, domestic and foreign, who use these to promote their agendas and to hinder positive democratic developments in our country.

In recent years, propaganda focused on critical political developments, such as elections or referendums, pandemics, and today Russian aggression against Ukraine, have radicalized and continue to radicalize various groups in the country and in the region, inciting incidents aimed at stopping EU integration and leaving NATO. These actors with malicious agendas, often of foreign origin, try to use each and every difference, even the slightest reason, to provoke conflict and radicalization between different groups of citizens through disinformation campaigns and other types of malicious interventions. Moreover, the internet and social networks are used as an effective tool to spread and reinforce this disinformation to create chaos, to cause fear, hatred and spread one-sided but conflicting opinions that cause conflict. This influence is aimed at disrupting the ongoing processes of consolidating democratic institutions, exploiting and deepening existing ethnic, religious, economic and ideological or party divisions, said Jashari in his statement.

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