Study Shows Government Stratcoms’ FB Pages Mainly Criticize the Opposition
Information Integrity Coalition and the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) study reveals that the Strategic Communication departments of the civil service “don’t perform their tasks properly.” The monitoring of the Facebook pages of the government stratcom department has shown that the content of most of its FB posts criticized media stories and media outlets critical of the government.
The study of the stratcoms of the government, and Ministries of Defense, Foreign Affairs and Interior, also showed that their stratcom departments are not active and rarely produce communication materials. For instance, the Stratcom FB page of the Georgian government published only 43 posts in the period from October 2021 to April 2023. According to the study, the most active Stratcom Facebook page has been that of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The study revealed that a number of posts devoted to Russian hybrid threats and methods of countering them has been minimal. Although the MFA’s Stratcom is responsible for monitoring misinformation about Georgian foreign policy, it has published only one article on the spread of misinformation against Georgia in Russian sources. In March, against the backdrop of protests against the “Russian law”, the MFA’s Stratcom did not publish a single post.
Strategic communication units paid little attention to the study of threats from hostile states. Some posts on their Facebook pages mentioned Russia as a foreign policy challenge. However, despite the focus on external threats, the articles published on these pages do not provide any insight into how Georgia can effectively counter these threats. The results of the monitoring and analysis of information from non-Georgian media have not been published either although falls within the purview of strategic communication agencies under the Ministries of Defense and Interior.
The vocabulary used on the Facebook pages of the Stratcoms in some cases did not meet the standards of political neutrality required for a public agency. For example, the government’s Stratcom Facebook page referred to the TV company “Formula” as “the TV of the accused Davit Kezerashvili”. At the time of the publication of one of the posts, the acting leader of the United National Movement party, Nika Melia, was referred to as “the bankrupt leader of the bankrupt force”.
The FB page of Ministry of Defense stratcom referred to some of the media outlets critical of the government, including “Mtavari Arkhi” and “TV Pirveli”, as “politically biased media”, “those with a political agenda” and ” a party TV”.
The study period coincided with Meta’s decision, to take down inauthentic coordinated network linked to the Georgian Government’s Department of Strategic Communications in May 2023. According to Meta, the network included 80 accounts, nine groups, 29 pages and two Instagram accounts. An fake network run by the Government’s Stratcom was involved in discrediting the March rallies and the opposition parties. A total of $33,500 was spent on advertising these posts. The government’s Stratcom has not yet commented on Meta’s decision.
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