Propaganda and desinformation in Belarus

The audi­ence in Belarus is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly influ­enced by 2 sources of pro­pa­gan­da — first­ly, Russ­ian-con­trolled pro­pa­gan­da and sec­ond­ly, pro­pa­gan­da con­trolled by Lukashenko.

Regard­ing Russ­ian-con­trolled pro­pa­gan­da, it is worth not­ing that it is open­ly and legal­ly present in Belarus on var­i­ous media (TV, books, mag­a­zines, news­pa­pers, con­certs, per­for­mances, etc.) How­ev­er, for a long time, Belaru­sian pro­pa­gan­da had some dif­fer­ences in nar­ra­tives com­pared to Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da. There have been sit­u­a­tions when, dur­ing the time of esca­lat­ing rela­tions between Putin and Lukashenko, these pro­pa­gan­da sources could even wage low-inten­si­ty infor­ma­tion wars with each oth­er.

As for Belaru­sian pror­a­gan­da, cur­rent Belaru­sian author­i­ties exert total con­trol over tele­vi­sion, radio and print state-owned media out­lets. This con­trol is for­malised both at the legal lev­el and in the work of the state media.

Non-state media out­lets and inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists are sub­ject­ed to sys­tem­at­ic, harsh and con­sis­tent harass­ment. This is expressed, first­ly, in direct reprisals such as deten­tions, beat­ings, search­es, arrests, con­vic­tions and tor­ture. And sec­ond­ly — in the form of cre­ation of eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry work­ing con­di­tions, such as unjus­ti­fied refusals to reg­is­ter media out­lets and arbi­trary liq­ui­da­tion of them, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry reg­u­la­tion of adver­tis­ing, refusals to print and dis­trib­ute their pro­duc­tion as well as refusals to accred­it jour­nal­ists.

More­over, the sys­tem of con­trol by the Belaru­sian state over its own pro­pa­gan­da has sev­er­al lev­els — legal, organ­i­sa­tion­al and finan­cial.

• Legal lev­el of con­trol

First­ly, all state pro­pa­gan­da sources are estab­lished by state bod­ies rang­ing from the pres­i­den­tial admin­is­tra­tion to dis­trict exec­u­tive bod­ies.

Sec­ond­ly, accord­ing to their legal sta­tus, the state broad­cast­ers are state bod­ies. For exam­ple, Bel­tel­era­dio­com­pa­ny, accord­ing to its Char­ter, is “the cen­tral state insti­tu­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus, pro­vid­ing cov­er­age of the state pol­i­cy through TV and radio broad­cast­ing, as well as per­form­ing oth­er sep­a­rate func­tions of the repub­li­can body of state admin­is­tra­tion”.

• Organ­i­sa­tion­al lev­el of con­trol

First­ly, edi­to­r­i­al man­agers are appoint­ed on a non-com­pet­i­tive basis fol­low­ing a non-trans­par­ent pro­ce­dure. As prac­tice shows, employ­ees demon­strat­ing absolute loy­al­ty to the author­i­ties are appoint­ed to top posi­tions. If their loy­al­ty is ques­tioned, they are imme­di­ate­ly dis­missed.

Sec­ond­ly, pro­pa­gan­da media should agree their con­tent with the exec­u­tive author­i­ties.

And final­ly, the secu­ri­ty forces have the effect of dis­cred­it­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions, as well as civ­il and polit­i­cal activists.

• Finan­cial lev­el of con­trol

The first prob­lem is the direct fund­ing, on a non-com­pet­i­tive and non-trans­par­ent basis, of state media offices.

And the sec­ond prob­lem is the cre­ation of var­i­ous finan­cial pref­er­ences for pro­pa­gan­da edi­tors.

The sit­u­a­tion described above dates back some 20 years, but cer­tain new trends can be dis­cerned over the last two and a half years.

Thus, start­ing with the protests in Belarus in 2020 after the results of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and Rus­si­a’s aggres­sion against Ukraine in 2022, Belaru­sian pro­pa­gan­da has become almost a clone of Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da. This is reflect­ed in the fre­quent syn­chro­ni­sa­tion of the mes­sages that dom­i­nate the dis­sem­i­nat­ed con­tent.

Accord­ing to Media IQ mon­i­tor­ing in 2022^[1], the main nar­ra­tives of Belaru­sian pro­pa­gan­da were:

“Belarus is a west­ern fore­post of fra­ter­nal Rus­sia and the last pil­lar of tra­di­tion­al Chris­t­ian val­ues, pre­serv­ing the mem­o­ry of the vic­to­ry in the Great Patri­ot­ic War and not allow­ing his­to­ry to be rewrit­ten. The West, through its neo­colo­nial pol­i­cy, has already enslaved Ukraine and the Baltic States, whose peo­ples are now suf­fer­ing. Only Belarus cares about unhap­py peo­ple from neigh­bour­ing coun­tries, grant­i­ng visa-free entry and accept­ing Ukraini­ans flee­ing the war. It is the West that is to blame for the war in Ukraine and con­tin­ues to foment it by sup­port­ing the local neo-Nazi author­i­ties with mon­ey and weapons”.

“Belarus and Rus­sia have suc­cess­ful­ly coped with sanc­tions togeth­er, and replaced West­ern part­ners with even more suc­cess­ful and promis­ing East­ern ones. All the prob­lems and trou­bles of Belarus are caused either by machi­na­tions of the West, or by objec­tive exter­nal fac­tors: eco­nom­ic cri­sis, pan­dem­ic, geopo­lit­i­cal redis­tri­b­u­tion of the world. The protest­ing Belaru­sians are either mean bribed pup­pets of the West, or fools. How­ev­er, Belarus copes suc­cess­ful­ly with sanc­tions and even gains some ben­e­fits and new oppor­tu­ni­ties from the sit­u­a­tion. Belarus owes all its suc­cess to the genius of Alexan­der Lukashenko. The Belaru­sian peo­ple sup­port him, and these peo­ple are true patri­ots.”

In addi­tion, the pre­sen­ta­tion of infor­ma­tion by the pro­pa­gan­da media has changed. Many pro­pa­gan­da pro­grammes now open­ly use aggres­sive rhetoric and insults against oppo­nents of the author­i­ties, incit­ing social dis­cord on the basis of polit­i­cal views, etc.

There­fore, the Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media sec­tor is now dis­cussing doc­u­ment­ing the crimes of Belaru­sian pro­pa­gan­da, tak­ing into account the expe­ri­ence of the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Tri­bunal for Rwan­da in the case of Free Radio and Tele­vi­sion of the Thou­sand Hills.