Zooming in on Slovakia

3 Mar

By Lukáš Zorád

At the moment, Slovakia is seeing a rare unity due to the attitudes against the war in Ukraine. Only a few radical actors, who are on the extreme end of the far right spectrum, remain pro-Russian, though even here we see a refusal of the war. The past two years were different, and dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, as this strongly polarised the country.

According to the Slovak Police Force report about disinformation from 2021, these are the most common hoaxes (narratives) in Slovakia:

Vaccination is harmful, ineffective, unnecessary and/or health/life threatening
Fake deaths as a vaccination consequence (misuse of deaths of specific individuals)
Medics are killing the patients (e.g. on pulmonary ventilation)
Situation is not that serious, state institutions are over-exaggerating
Situation abroad is much better (withholding information about the number of vaccinated people abroad)
The pandemic is a secret plan by the powerful to rule/destroy humanity

Of course this does not mean it was only the pandemic dividing the country, although this was logically the most prominent issue.

According to Richard Kuchta (2021) who followed the narratives of extreme right groups on three social media from January to August 2021 (Instagram, Facebook and Telegram), the most common narrative among these groups was nationalism, which occurred in almost every second post. Following this were anti-LGBTI narratives, found in 1,947 posts (16.5%) and anti-Semitic narratives, found in 1,694 posts (14.4%). Notable is also the anti-media narrative, which was detected in 11.8% of posts and anti-democracy narrative with 10.3%. Particularly prevalent in the anti-democratic narrative were sentiments against the non-governmental sector and liberalism, which is used as an adjective to describe political establishment (including conservative parties), progressive ideas and liberal democracy as a system. These are used to polarise society by spreading hate speech and are combined also with other narratives, especially anti-LGBTI.

“Anti-LGBTI narratives were found in 1,947 posts (16.5%), anti-Semitic narratives were found in 1,694 posts (14.4%). ”

In terms of who is responsible for these narratives, the scene is rather broad and well established already. One group of super-spreaders constitutes around the far right political parties. Another group of super-spreaders constitutes around so-called alternative media such as Zem a Vek, and Slobodný vysielač. Thanks to the methodical approach of the Slovak public database of conspiracy webs (www.konspiratori.sk), we have a list of over 200 web pages with problematic content in Slovakia and Czech Republic.

Slovakia is unique when it comes to online hate because it is a country of paradoxes when it comes to public opinion (according to Globsec trends 2021). Slovakia holds the distinction of being the only country in the CEE region to record rising support for a pro-Western orientation, including EU and NATO membership, since 2017. Moscow still gains a sympathetic audience among Slovaks though, with 47% identifying Russia as a strategic partner and 55% perceiving Vladimir Putin positively. We can assume that this support will drop significantly.

“In terms of who is responsible for these narratives, the scene is rather broad and well established already. ”

Though 75% of respondents judge the Slovak government to have handled the COVID-19 pandemic badly, 68%, the most in the region, believe it should be tasked with vaccine procurement negotiations rather than the EU. While 19% of Slovak respondents believe that the Chinese regime could be an inspiration for their country, 88% consider democracy based on equality, human rights and freedoms and rule of law to be a good system for their country.

Slovakia has a vibrant and resilient civil society that is able to communicate, coordinate and respond quickly in critical moments. We are also seeing improvements in the public institutions and we are working on building trust among institutions and citizens. Highly motivated people with good track records in their expertise are taking up public service jobs and are trying to change the communication.

“Though 75% of respondents judge the Slovak government to have handled the COVID-19 pandemic badly, 68%, the most in the region, believe it should be tasked with vaccine procurement negotiations rather than the EU.”

Perhaps among the most active and successful of online initiatives was by the Slovak Ministry of Health during the pandemic. Although the general chaos and disinformation caused by disinformation media, opposition political parties and incompetent government response (that lead to the resignation of the prime minister during the pandemic), the Ministry of Health managed to increase it´s communication activities, did it in a non-confrontational way, based on facts and positive narratives (no blame games), managed to gain significant increase of followers and became one of the most popular pages on Slovak Facebook. The Slovak president Zuzana Čaputová created a post that was among the top 5 Facebook posts in 2021, of which were all positive messages.