News reporting from online portals – social networks and public impact

09.09.2022

The distribution of information nowadays is done in record time due to the development of technology and technological tools such as smart phones, different platforms as well as social networks, which enable real-time access to daily events. In 2022, according to Datare portal, 97% of the population has access to the Internet.[1] Moreover, according to the Statistics Agency of Kosovo (ASK) in 2021, the frequency of using the Internet several times during the day was 80%. Knowing this high-speed distribution of information, then the population in Kosovo is also vulnerable to the distribution of disordered information through online portals and social networks, from this it follows that the possibility for citizens to read news with disordered information is great. since in many online portals and social networks, offensive, harsh, sexist language, news containing exaggerated headlines and news with fake content are used. Seeing the large number of news distributed with such characteristics and in order to identify them, the D4D Institute continues to monitor portals and social networks, and this is the third report. Last year, D4D abandoned the first report[1], where the election campaign and runoff in Kosovo were monitored, while at the beginning of this year, the second report[2], with the monitoring of online portals and social networks, was abandoned. for the months of October-November and December and therefore this is the third report launched by the D4D Institute, where online portals and social networks have been monitored. This report includes the monitoring period from January 1 to March 31. This includes the monitoring of the categories: Political Divisions and harsh language, Foreign Influence, Special Court, Kosovo-Serbia Dialogue, Misogyny and online violence against women and Covid-19. The feature of this report, in addition to the categories of news that have been analyzed in previous reports, this report also includes the analysis of articles that have been reported on the Ukraine-Russia conflict, news that has been entered in the category of External Impact. These categories of news are analyzed in two languages; Albanian and Serbian.