North Macedonia: Facebook Pages Target Users with ‘Identical Content’

The Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, DFRLab, which works to counter disinformation online, says its researchers have found dozens of Facebook pages linked to at least 10 Macedonian news outlets, demonstrating "several characteristics pointing to coordinated activity, including the near simultaneous publication of identical content".

While some of these Facebook "assets" acknowledged their connection to the outlets whose content they were amplifying, others had no known connection.

"The assets also demonstrated signs of inauthenticity, as they were created as various interest pages, but ultimately promoted content from news sites to which they disclosed no connection," DFRLab said.

It added this was clearly an efficient strategy, as the pages in every network had more followers than the official Facebook pages of the promoted media outlets.

A total of four separate networks or subsets of coordinated Facebook assets were amplifying content published by some of these websites: Republika Online, Kurir, Denesen, News24, Puls 24, Galama Club, among others. 

Only one of these is a tabloid. The others publish mostly political content: one of the outlets is openly pro-opposition. The others offer more balanced reporting on internal affairs. 

DFRLab research found coordination within networks of pages, but not across the four networks. There was also no sign that North Macedonian media outlets themselves managed the inauthentic networks.

The Facebook pages were created between 2009 and 2018 and were mostly managed from North Macedonia. Some were managed from the US.

According to DFRLab's research, some of the Facebook pages seemed connected to Adinamic Media, which publishes news sites supporting the main...