Reports
Estonia Weekly: Government Distrust, Ethnic Divisions, and Freedom of Speech Concerns
Issues of national division, “untrustful” and grim nature of policy, disappointment in the state, government and democracy, as well as Latvian national policy towards the Russian media were among the most discussed topics over the social media in Estonia this week. In general, the narratives were suggesting that Estonian state media is dividing society between Russians and Estonians, solely on ethnic basis, and that politics is the only source of depression. The particular post was illustrated by a "no politics" sign. Other original posts supported that people cannot trust in politicians, people are not free, there is no true freedom of speech. As among the news from Latvia came the decision of the Latvian Parliament regarding the future policies towards the Russian language media, it was quickly translated into the narrative, that Latvian Parliament has adopted a policy of immediate closing of state financed media on Russian Language, which is fake news.
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Estonia Weekly: Pro-Russia Sentiments, NATO Skepticism, and Free Speech Concerns
Issues of trade, NATO, Russian language, Estonian language policy, municipal politics and freedom of speech were covered this week in Estonian social media channels and websites. The main narratives were related to the importance of securing good trade relations with Russia, which is a key to Estonian business success. Also, the reliability of NATO was questioned in the narrative over the upcoming exercises. Reforms in Estonian education policy sparked comments on how it will relate to Russian language use in Estonia, while recent legislation that would prevent hate speech was marked as an end of the freedom of speech in Estonia.
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