Belarusian analysts detected a coordinated narrative surge online before Armenia’s parliamentary vote, revealing sudden spikes in new commentators and systematic disinformation.
The team of Belarusian programmers tracked Russia’s interference in the parliamentary elections in Armenia. The head of the group, Pavlo Liber, told the Belarusian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty about it. According to him, IT specialists used a tool to identify coordinated narrative operations on social networks, paying attention to the efforts of major players – Russia, China, and Iran – to influence the policies of other countries through networks.
«Usually this happens especially actively during some elections or some emergencies. For example, when drones flew into Poland in September last year, there was a huge disinformation attack; we also monitored that. We also monitored the elections in Moldova and now we are helping our Armenian partners from the Center for Media Initiatives monitor the elections in Armenia»
– Pavlo Liber
The design.ai platform used for data collection covered almost all content: videos, comments, short clips, live streams, and discussions. This volume allowed mapping out active commentators and identifying hubs of disinformation spread.
Monitoring began before the official start of the election campaign – in Armenia this was recorded from January 1, and the elections themselves are scheduled for June 7.
«It is possible to understand what the information space looks like in normal conditions, how it looks before the elections, and, in fact, what new things appear there. And we have just observed a tenfold increase in narratives around anti-government, anti-European themes. We observed a large number of new commentators appearing directly before the elections in this information space. And, in fact, during all this time we have also been forming the commentator profile and unusual activity of commentators»
«It is possible to understand what the information space looks like in normal conditions, how it looks before the elections, and, in fact, what new things appear there. And we have just observed a tenfold increase in narratives around anti-government, anti-European topics. We observed a large number of new commentators appearing directly before the elections in this information space. And, in fact, during all this time we have also formed the commentator profile and unusual activity of commentators»
– Pavlo Liber
According to Liber, in the case of Armenia there was a «clearly pronounced large-scale narrative attack» on anti-European and anti-government narratives, with an emphasis on creating a new normal in the information space. He stressed that this part of hybrid warfare uses coordination of narratives to influence people’s minds through social networks and other platforms.
«The essence of such an attack lies in creating a kind of ‘new normal,’ when a person, entering social networks, reading comments, sees only one position simply because this information space is crowded. And this is part of such a new modern hybrid war in the information space, where people try to influence others using such coordinated narrative operations»
– Pavlo Liber
Liber also noted that the trend is not limited to Armenia: Belarusian channels, X (Twitter), YouTube and television information platforms record significant activity of so-called «bots» and other manipulative profiles.
On June 7, Armenia held parliamentary elections. According to preliminary data from partial vote counts, the Civil Contract party received more than fifty percent of the votes, and the Strong Armenia bloc trailed behind. These results indicate that information operations in the region are becoming the subject of systematic monitoring by Belarusian experts, helping to better understand the mechanisms of influence and to develop countermeasures in the future.
Thus, Belarusian IT analysts continue to monitor changes in the information ecosystem, providing tools to counter manipulation and helping understand how external actors attempt to shape public opinion during important political processes.