An IPP study shows the massive presence of Russian propaganda on Ondoklassniki

A group of authors from the Institute for Public Policy (IPP) has recently published the study „Russian Propaganda on Odnoklassniki: the case of the Republic of Moldova”  where it showed how and through which groups of this social network are the main propagandistic messages from the Russian Federation conveyed. According to the study, the ratio of such messages on Odnoklassniki represented 57 percent of the total number of messages analysed by the researchers.

The authors of the study, among which are Oazu Nantoi, Alexandru Platon and Aliona Cristei, intended to analyse how Russian propaganda manifests itself on one of the most popular social networks from Moldova, and to identify the main subjects debated on Ok.ru.

Thus, the research results showed that out of the total number of 1139 analysed messages (100%), about 57% were propaganda messages, out of which 38% - open propaganda, and 19% are subliminal messages.

According to the analysis, the main identified propagandistic messages were anti-Ukraine (21.1%), anti- European Union (13.1%) and pro Russian Federation (20%) messages. At the same time, authors concluded that, presently, in the Republic of Moldova there are no counter strategies to reduce the impact of Russian propaganda on the OK social network and that they should be developed to fight more efficiently fake messages.

One of the editors of the study, Stella Utica, has clarified today for Media-azi.md that IPP recommended only the adoption of such fighting propaganda strategies, but that subsequently others should also provide their own opinions to this subject.  

However, the first steps in this direction were taken also by IPP, which has developed an extension for Google Chrome, which can help users detect fake news. Stella Uţica mentioned that the extension is at the testing stage, and that in the future a specialized team, including journalists, will analyse signals coming from users and label them as true or fake news.

According to online audience measurements, the Odnoklassniki network was the most popular in the Republic of Moldova in August 2017, with over 1 million unique visitors per month.

Please note that last year, Ukraine has banned access to Russian social networks "Vkontakte" and "Odnoklassniki", as well as Mail.ru resources, but some users continue to use them, avoiding the blockage through special programs.