Reports
Latvia Weekly: Media and Trump
In the examined week, the content surrounded domestic issues such as corruption and media funding and international topics such as the upcoming US elections, NATO and assistance for Ukraine. Most notably, there is a highly critical view of the capabilities and the effectiveness of NATO, which were also prominent in the prior two weeks. The reasoning for such claims is rooted in the unwillingness of other NATO states to help in the case of an attack. Regarding content, the leading platform remains TikTok which garners the most engagement and there is a significant decrease in engagement with content published on Facebook. Although some of the examined content creators are increasingly more active on Twitter/X, engagement remains low.
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Latvia Weekly: Public Transport and NATO
In the examined week, the content primarily surrounded domestic issues relating to alleged corruption, the potential invasion by Russia, and the inability of NATO to protect the Baltic states. Such narratives have been employed by highly nationalistic content creators claiming to be supporters of Ukraine and those more aligned with the Kremlin narratives. The premise of the claim is that NATO is either ineffective not have the capability to protect the Baltic states or will not be willing to protect the Baltic states in the case of an invasion.
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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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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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