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Reports

February 12th - February 18th, 2024 by Otto Tabuns

Latvia Weekly: School reforms and corruption

During the examined week, the content primarily surrounded domestic issues relating to school reforms, an investigative report on one of the opposition parties, and high living expenses. A common theme throughout the content examined is that all of the issues are directly linked to corruption and leading political parties potentially to create lower trust in government. Additionally, the content discussed often mentions how specific policies negatively affect children. Most notably, the disinformation actors from the opposition party "Latvia in the first place" were recently exposed for their intentional content creation, including disinformation narratives. From this week's findings, the disinformation actors that belong to the opposition party and their primary channels on social media are receiving significantly less engagement (the posts now reach less than fifty likes compared to the usual few hundred). Additionally, the content published now is milder in the disinformation narratives and trying to portray them more covertly or does not include them at all.

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February 12th - February 18th, 2024 by Olevs Nikers

Estonia Weekly: Ukraine and Soviet-era policies

This week, there were many posts which were connected to the Estonian Independence Day, many of which involved people claiming that they hoped that the repression and demonisation of the Russian civilians would end.  There was also a claim that an Estonian attacked a person for being a Russian speaker.  The Russian embassy to Estonia had many posts concerning the Euromaidan protests in Kyiv 10 years ago. It stated that this is when Ukraine fell into Nazism, and the involvement of the West is what caused the war along with Ukraine's bombing of Donbas for several years.  Social and political issues, such as price increases and the budget, were also mentioned in posts, and one poster claimed that the price increases in Estonia today are similar to those seen during the Soviet Union.

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February 5th - February 11th, 2024 by Urtė Andriukaitytė

Lithuania Weekly: Putin’s interview

Kremlin-aligned media outlets were covering highly scattered topics during this reporting week. Among them, they widely discussed US journalist Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The authors claimed that the conversation touched on important topics such as the threat of war with NATO, the situation in Ukraine, and a possible global nuclear conflict.

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February 5th - February 11th, 2024 by Otto Tabuns

Latvia Weekly: Living standards and train controversies

In the examined week, there was considerably lower production of content disseminating disinformation potentially due to a series produced by investigative journalists uncovering how much content is produced by a leading opposition party "Latvija pirmajā vietā" (Latvia in the first place). The common narrative in this week's findings was corruption and the low level of living standards in Latvia. Most notably, as in prior weeks, the content has touched upon the controversy regarding the trains. In regard to the form of the content, video format creates the most engagement and significantly more engagement is reached on TikTok and Facebook in comparison to other platforms.

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