Fake news spread quickly among countries that have language similarity and disinformation practically spills over from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia and vice versa, considers Darko Brkan, researcher and journalist from the “Why Not?” Association from Bosnia and Hercegovina. In the conversation with Civil Media, he familiarized us with the situation of dealing with disinformation and propaganda in his country.

“The situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is similar to the one in the entire region, though its particularity is in that the country is located somewhat in the center and there are various geopolitical influences, both from the east and the west. So, certainly there is this influence also in the sector of disinformation. Because of the language similarity, of course, information from Bosnia and Herzegovina quickly spread to Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia and vice versa. So, that is one level of the problem, but another level of the problem is, for instance, the fact that in Bosnia and Herzegovina there are actors on the ground who don’t do this for the purpose of spreading propaganda, but rather to gain money, and there are also those who are conditioned by a political or business influence to create disinformation”, he says.

According to him, there is also strong external influence from actors of fake news who want to spill over their narrative into Bosnia and Herzegovina, or to create local narratives that suit their politics.

“Recognizing fake news depends on the type of audience, age, education, and ultimately from the type of disinformation. Unfortunately, like in the rest of the region, the audience is not sufficiently skilled to recognize fake news, problematic sources and all those problems that we come to”, he says.

Brkan is decisive that the problem can be solved only be bringing the following together – checking fake news, education, legal mechanisms and so on.

“We, as a small country with a population of 3.4 million, cannot solve the problem by ourselves, it should be a regional effort, and a global one certainly, because all global trends, EU legislation and similar have a big influence”, he says.

Ana Vasilevska

Camera and editing: Samuel Debus/OK-TV Ludwigshafen

Translation: N. Cvetkovska

The interview is part of the project “Resilient journalism in countering disinformation and propaganda”, which CIVIL is implementing in partnership with Youth4Media (Y4M), with the support of the Government of North Rhine-Westphalia, Dusseldorf, Germany.