The social network Facebook is flooded with so-called “fake” profiles that the users create for various reasons. One of the most frequent reasons for creating a fake profile is the easiness in spreading fake news. Facebook wages everyday war with such profiles, in order to spread the dissemination of disinformation, although, truth to be told, this is not easy at all. According to the calculations by the Facebook team, the fake profiles account for 5% of the total number of active profiles in the fourth quarter of 2018, and the first quarter of 2019.
The F2N2 was intrigued by the post published on the profile with the name Sanja Novakovic, in which an alleged event from a high school Skopje is retold. Namely, it is stated that the students in one of the best high schools in Skopje were disappointed to see that at three places in their certificates “Republic of North Macedonia” was written. The text further claims that when filling the applications for enroling the next year, all students “coincidentaly and spontaneously” have written “Macedonia” as country of birth and “Macedonian” as their nationality. This act was allegedly approved by the teacher who addresed them with the following words: “Well done kids, that’s the way to do it!”.
This whole story has not been support with any proof. On the contrary, it is based on the retelling of the alleged event on the profile mentioned before, for which the portals Infomax, Skopje24, Мotika, Infonews, Kolozeg.info claim that it belongs to a mother of one of the students. Publishing one picture of the applications on which it is claimed that all students wrote “Macedonia” as country of birth and “Macedonian” as their nationality would have helped the credibility of the article, similarly as a picture of the certificate was publsihed.
In the last part of the article the author blames the Government that it conducts a genocide over the Macedonians, which is a serious claim due to the significance of this word.
If one searches the name Sanja Novakovic on Facebook, the results bring two profiles, one with Cyrillic, and one with Latin alphabet, while both profiles are with the same profile and cover photo.
The profile with the name written in Latin alphabet is full with posts against the name “North Macedonia”, as well as posts for boycotting of the Constitutional amendments, the presidential elections etc. You will not find one photo from the certain Sanja. It is not required that there should be one, but this adds more weight to the fact that this is a fake profile.
In continuation through a graphic example, we will show you how many followers have each of the portals that had shared this disinformation, as well as how many interactions and sharing are “honored” for.
If we collected all these numbers, we would have a total of 889,913 followers, 7191 interactions and 722 shares. According to the Facebook algorithm, this disinformation touched from 17,798 to 57,884 users, a number that is not at all for underestimating.
In order to determine the reach, the tool CrowdTangle has been used.
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This project was funded in part through a U.S. Embassy grant. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed herein are those of the implementers/authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Government.
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