HOW MISINFORMATION BECAME A PROFITABLE BUSINESS IN EASTERN EUROPE
In several Eastern European countries, misinformation is a lucrative business, reliant on advertising revenue, and pulling in cash from a variety of other sources including government subsidies, crowdfunding, tax designations, donations and sales of merchandise.
Another main trend in the misinformation business is the fast recycling of URLs. Websites appear and disappear at a fast pace, still, their Facebook page, where the community appears to remain stable, helps these sites maintain their traffic to the newly emerged URLs.
For more details about how the misinformation market works in the region, read the final report of our Business of Misinformation project.

In India, commercial advertisers are the largest players in terms of funding spent in the media, but the state has also a significant role, financing the country’s public service broadcaster, shelling out public advertising money to commercial media and holding a monopoly over the news radio market, our report found.
In Georgia, news is a much-sought product, but its production is not a lucrative business. The financial struggles left the media in the hands of the government and advertisers, many of whom are powerful financial groups. Once-popular newspapers abandoned print and moved entirely online. Nearly half of the Georgian youth follow political news on the internet, but the internet is far from providing the silver bullet for Georgia’s journalism. To learn more about journalism in Georgia, read the full Media Influence Matrix report here.

“If masks are a symbol of the crisis, looking behind the mask has come to symbolize journalists’ resistance to the abuse of power and the sheer incompetence of those in decision making positions,” Eva Bognar, our Senior Program Officer and Researcher writes in her article, ‘As press freedom suffers with Covid-19, journalists must look behind the masks of power’, published by the Ethical Journalism Network.

Our Fellow, Sejal Parmar, worked as an expert consultant with the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect to produce the UN Guidance Note on Addressing and Countering COVID-19 related Hate Speech. Parmar was recently appointed to the Council of Europe Committee of Experts on Combating Hate Speech as an independent member.

It’s a serious problem that journalists don’t have the adequate opportunity to ask questions, our Director, Marius Dragomir said to BBC News Russian. The article covered the media situation in Hungary, and Dragomir talked about the need for journalists to have more access to information.

The US-funded Radio Free Europe is now active in Bulgaria and Romania and is expanding into Hungary, to fight against misinformation and for media freedom. Politico’s article covering the developments quoted our researcher, Dumitrita Holdis, according to whom “there is good reporting in Romania, there is good journalism, but it doesn't reach many people.”

Evaluations should be used to adjust media development strategies, with a stronger focus on sustainability and efficiency that measure long-term impact, according to a new study written by our Director, Marius Dragomir. The study is based on 77 evaluation projects documented by its author between 2009 and 2019.

CMDS’ flagship project, Media Influence Matrix now covers more than 50 countries. The main goal of the project is to investigate the profound impact that rapid shifts in policy, funding and technology are having on journalism today. A new report on Israel is expected very soon.
In the Journalism Breakthroughs project, which is aimed at collecting examples and best practices to enrich the knowledge about innovation in journalism, we will continue covering innovations related to the Covid-19 epidemic and will take a look at Latin America and the Middle East as well.
But the Center doesn't only cover innovations: we are also working on innovative projects and publications. In the framework of the Black Waters project, we are preparing to publish our very first comic book. The Business of Misinformation project, aimed at keeping track of individuals and companies that own misinformation networks and their links to institutions, political parties, and other individuals, also takes the Center to uncharted territories: we are planning to publish our first e-book.
Finally, we are happy to announce that the Center will host its first online event on June 29. Learn more about the webinar ‘Free vs Protected Information Online: Trends, Risks and Possibilities in the Age of Platforms’ here.