Report
Latvia Weekly: How Outrage Is Fueling a Populist Surge
The previously fringe Union of New Latvians party is now polling to pass the 5% threshold for Riga’s city council. Its leaders Glorija Grevcova and Rūdolfs Brēmanis are generating social media engagement through content which can be described as “outrage porn.” They are stirring up outrage in their audience using charged and even fake topics to provoke strong emotional reactions. Guess the populist political party which gained the most engagements for its posts on Facebook, TikTok and Telegram? It was not Roslikovs, the leader of Stability! party. It was not Ainārs Šlesers, Trump-like leader of Latvia First party. It was Glorija Grevcova and Rūdolfs Brēmanis from the Union New Latvians.
Weekly Reports
Lithuania Weekly: Search for the new Minister of Defence
This week, domestic issues dominated the stories, with the most engagement within Kremlin-aligned media in Lithuania. Pro-Kremlin outlets continued to explore the resignation of the former Minister of National Defence Arvydas Anušauskas more deeply, using it to criticise the government further, present various theories about why it happened, and review the possible candidates for the post. Discussions about the upcoming war were also present within the malign media: many of the articles discussed the subject of NATO sending troops to Ukraine and openly stated that war with Russia is simply inevitable; it just depends on what agreements will be reached during negotiations with Russia and what the outcome of the current war will be for Lithuania.
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Latvia Weekly: Business Enterprises and Coalition Parties
In the examined week, the primary narratives surrounded the corruption and lack of trust within the government as well as the perceived threat by Russia and Russians within Latvia.
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Estonia Weekly: Voting rights and economic depression
This week, there were many posts claiming that the Estonian government wants to remove the voting rights of Russians and Belorussians and change the constitution to be able to do that.
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Lithuania Weekly: Minister of Defence stepping down
During the reporting week, the Minister of National Defense, Arvydas Anušauskas, announced his resignation. The sudden and unexpected event generated mass reactions across all media, including the Kremlin-aligned. Most malign actors and outlets emphasised that after it became clear that Anušaukas resigned, Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė had to explain the situation immediately. Failing to do so, or, as Kremlin-aligned media put it, “her unwillingness to do so”, indicated that “there is no professionalism left in this government”. They also claimed that it was not only “the worst time to announce his [Anušauskas] resignation” referring to the intense situation with the war in the close neighbourhood and during the weekend of the “election” of the Russian president), but the delayed response let the panic spread “like wildfire in society for three days”. The story itself and the follow-up handling of it allowed the anti-government narratives to spread further and possibly affect the general view of the ruling government before the upcoming elections later this year.
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Latvia Weekly: Russia and European Parliament elections
In the examined week, content primarily surrounded themes of corruption mainly relating to the former prime minister and current foreign minister Krisjanis Karins and Russia concerning potential threats from Russia, trade with Russia, and communication from the government regarding these issues as well as the treatment of Russian diaspora in Latvia. The narratives of corruption and harmful treatment of the Russian diaspora in Latvia have been present in the prior examined months, whereas the argument on Latvia to retain some form of economic cooperation with Russia resulted from an initiative in the parliament to ban all such activities. When comparing the audience’s response regarding similar content concerning the treatment of the Russian diaspora in Latvia on different platforms (Facebook and Twitter), the engagement reached on Twitter is noticeably more critical, calling out the author’s logistical inconsistencies and misrepresentation of facts.
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Estonia Weekly: Economy and high taxes
This week, many posts focused on the economy, raising taxes and the budget. Several posts claimed the misuse of state funds by politicians for political advertising. Posts contended that the higher taxes are what is causing the economic downfall. Some posts centred around the Ukraine war, as well, with claims that Kaya Kallas cannot guarantee that Estonian soldiers will not be sent to Ukraine. there was also a story about an Estonian ambassador who was removed from a delegation flight to Japan because he was supposedly drunk, but no one will explain what happened.
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Lithuania Weekly: heating atmosphere regarding Presidential elections
During this reporting week, the focus was on the upcoming Presidential elections and other domestic issues. Kremlin-aligned actors emphasised the recent findings that there were some cyber security violations while collecting signatures to ensure presidential candidacies online. The main target immediately became Ingrida Šimonytė, the current Prime Minister, who collected the necessary number of signatures at record speed. As she represents the ruling government, these cyber security issues overlapped with general anti-government sentiments. Moreover, recent massive financial scandals still often appears as an argument against the government. Some maligned actors didn’t hesitate to picture local LGBT movements vastly negatively, using a harsh lexicon.
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Latvia Weekly: Media and Trump
During the examined week, the content primarily surrounded previously mentioned narratives, such as the need to support Donald Trump, corruption within the coalition government, the Istanbul Convention, and potential threats by Russia. A video published on Tiktok regarding a German warship in Riga garnered 740k views and 1,5k comments. The opinions expressed in the comments show two things: first, there is trust in the effectiveness of NATO and second, there is a brief that Russian threats might materialise shortly. Regarding the form of the content, TikTok remains the platform that creates the most engagement and reaches a larger audience. Some of the examined content creators are increasingly more active on Twitter, and engagement is not as high as in TikTok, but it is now comparable to that of Facebook.
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Estonia Weekly: Cars and Estonian schools
The bulk of the posts focused on the switch in the language of instruction in Estonian schools, the issues that will arise, and how the government will do nothing about it except create a Potemkin village. There were also many posts regarding new taxes on things such as cars and pensions, with the Conservative Estonian People’s Party calling for people to protest by stopping their vehicles because protests are the only way to get the government’s attention. Finally, there were posts about Estonia being pushed by the West towards war with Russia and posts about Kaya Kallas trying to appear as non-Russian as possible.
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