Mass civil protests continue to shake the authoritarian regimes of Eastern Europe. The events that began in August 2020 after the presidential election in Belarus once again prove that society is changing dynamically, unlike the government. Therefore, the authorities are in dire need not only of violently suppressing protests and destroying the opposition but also of providing informational support for their actions to reduce tensions in society. Informational confrontation, social network, impact assessment authors of the United States, Great Britain, and Russia. U.S. political scientists S. Belly and S. Chornykh cited the reasons for the protests in Belarus as the violation of the presidential election, the deteriorating economic conditions in the country, as well as political repression against the opposition [5]. In addition, they highlighted the tendency for mass protests to spread in post-Soviet countries after the election.
wrong direction.
country [
It is obvious that the time of change in Belarus has come, an unprecedented number of participants
in protests in this country shows how ineffective state propaganda is, even with the complete dominance
of the classic channels of information (television, print media). The situation in Belarus demonstrates
the wide advantages of using information systems and social networks [
The purpose of the study is to analyze the forces and means of state and opposition information resources in Belarus after August 2020 and their comparison.
Works on the study of protests in the Republic of Belarus in 2020 are publicly available by the
2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
A group of political scientists A. Gerasimenko, T. Lokot, O. Onuchi, and M. Weiermars conducted an online survey of 12,000 Belarusians over the age of 18. 60% of respondents said that during the shutdown of the Internet, they relied solely on rumors [8].
Consider the main channels of communication with the population of Belarus, government agencies, and opposition. 2.1.
The state propaganda of Belarus, feeling its inability to effectively counteract the telegram channels, began to act more and more despotically and radically, hanging all possible negative labels on the protesters. These actions extremely powerfully polarize society. Therefore, in connection with the recent events - the forced landing of a plane with the opposition Protasevich, mass arrests on fake accusations of opponents, and despotism in the information field of the country, this situation can be classified as a hybrid civil war. According to the classical definition, civil war is a violent conflict within the country, a struggle of organized groups that seek to seize power in the center and the region or seek to change public policy. Belarus currently has almost all its signs, except for open hostilities between protesters and government troops.
One of the lines of Belarusian state propaganda is the demonization of the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine in 2013-2014, its political regime, and servicemen defending the state in eastern Ukraine, while completely concealing the fact of Russian military aggression. "The Maidan in Ukraine has led to war, and protesters against the Lukashenko regime want to bring the same troubles to Belarus," are the theses of Belarusian state television today. The propagandists first voiced the "compromising material" against Roman Protasevych, who was later captured: he fought in the Donbas on the Ukrainian side, which now threatens him with aggravating circumstances in the Belarusian court. It is not the first time that Belarusian oppositionists have been linked to the war in Donbas: they did it earlier with journalist Kateryna Andreeva, the author of the book "Belarusian Donbass" about mercenaries from her country who fought on the Russian side. The book has been declared extremist in Belarus, Andreeva is being held in a penal colony, and the state channel broadcasts aloud that SMERSH does not deal with such people. Hryhoriy Azarenko, an employee of the republican channel STV, calls Ukraine "a country of beggars and dying people" on the broadcast, "an American state of" post-Maidan Ukraine. " Then show videos of fighting in the Donbas, Ukrainians captured by Russian hybrid forces, curses at former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Azarenko ironically calls Poroshenko a "humane candy oligarch." And so Hryhoriy Azarenko addresses Ukrainians: “They have turned a prosperous country into a pirate banderostan. Your children are being sold to bodies on a large scale, and girls are being delivered to European brothels almost officially.”
Finally, viewers brought to the "condition" are told that such "democracy" and "Bandera" are supported by Europe, and such fears and horrors want to attract protesters against Alexander Lukashenko's regime in Belarus.
The second line of Belarusian state propaganda is the demonization of protesters. They are portrayed as "Moral freaks, murderers, riot organizers" as on STV channel, or as "rats devouring the bright future of the country" as on channel Belarus. In contrast, there is the image of self-proclaimed President Lukashenko as "He is popularly simple and masculinely strong, he is strict and fair, he is firmly officerly and pleasantly wise. He does not want praise and flattery, he does not want wealth and glory, he has no one to prevent and no one to envy. Only the people are in his mind, soul, and heart.
The key player in the structure of state propaganda in Belarus is the National State Television and Radio Company of the Republic of Belarus, which includes 6 television channels:
The key means of state propaganda among the print media is the newspaper "Soviet Belarus." The Council of the European Union called the newspaper Sovetskaya Belorussiya "the main propaganda newspaper" of the Belarusian authorities. Dmytro Zhuk, editor-in-chief and former director of the state news agency BelTA, appeared in court in the case of BelTA, the trial of Marina Zolotova, editor-inchief of Belarus's largest private Internet portal, TUT.BY, as one of the key prosecution witnesses.
The largest state news agency is BelTA.
Belarusian law enforcement agencies, primarily the State Security Committee (KGB), established pro-government channels in response to opposition Telegram channels. The most popular among them are "Pool of the First" and "BELTA."
The Pool of the First is a channel that praises the achievements of state authorities, creates fakes, and labels opposition resources and protesters. As of October 28, 2021, it has 103,517 followers. The coverage of 1 publication is 81.4 thousand people. Daily coverage is 494 thousand people. The channel viewing statistics by month for 2021 are presented in Fig. 1.
BELTA is a channel of the state news agency of the same name. As of October 28, 2021, it has 20,587 followers. Coverage of 1 publication is 3.3 thousand people. Day coverage is 235.1 thousand people. The channel viewing statistics by month for 2021 are presented in Fig. 2.
The main pro-government channels on YouTube are BelTA News Agency, ATN: News of Belarus and the World, and ONT TV Channel.
Information Agency BelTA was registered on the platform on August 31, 2010. The channel publishes news of the Belarusian authorities. All the channel's videos have 104 million views. The statistics of views can be seen in Fig. 3.
ONT TV Channel was registered on the platform on April 5, 2012. This channel is the main mouthpiece of state propaganda on the platform. It publishes videos with fakes, threats of reprisals against opponents, intimidation of the population, etc. All the channel's videos have 308.6 million views. The statistics of views can be seen in Fig. 4.
ATN: News of Belarus and the World was registered on April 25, 2012. This channel distributes videos of Belarusian state TV channels on the platform, creates fakes about the European Union and democracy, and hangs labels on the opposition. All the channel's videos have 122.9 million views. The statistics of views can be seen in Fig. 5.
The informational and psychological impact of Belarusian state resources can be represented by the five-ring model developed in the United States. At the center of the American model is leadership, national leaders who are a critical component in the architecture of the national security system and are surrounded and protected by four other shells (layers, rings). Thus, the second layer is the life support system, production, factories, power plants, oil plants, and banks, which during the war are vital to the functioning of the military structure - highways, railways, power lines - create a third shell. The fourth layer is society (population). And the last, fifth, outer layer is the armed forces. This model is implemented according to the scheme "war from the inside out". However, the American scheme works well in conflict zones, where the armed forces are seen by the local population as an external aggressor. The model of the five rings of state propaganda in Belarus can be presented in Fig. 6.
Opposition information resources, in the absence of large funding, are mainly represented by Internet resources - primarily Telegram channels, which allow the authors of the posts anonymity, and hence security, and YouTube, which investigates the crimes of the self-proclaimed president of Belarus.
The key topics of all opposition resources are: crimes of law enforcement agencies; crimes of civil servants; persecution of oppositionists; economic situation in Belarus; involvement of the population in the plan of the opposition "Victory".
A broad campaign against the KGB forces in Belarus and the Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime and Corruption of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus has been launched against the administrators. These law enforcement officers are trying to seize control of the opposition's resources by luring administrators to a meeting, linking to phishing sites, and searching for telephone numbers. The most striking situation is the Telegram channel "White Robes", which was seized by law enforcement agencies by detaining the founder of the account and deleting him.
Almost the only opposition TV channel is Belsat. Belsat is a TV channel that positions itself as the first independent in Belarus. It began broadcasting on December 10, 2007. The project is based in Poland, but many Belarusians participate in the channel's work: journalists, presenters, administrators, and technical specialists. Due to the satellite distribution of the TV channel, a relatively small number of Belarusian citizens can watch it.
Among the print media, the most popular newspaper is Narodna Volya, but at the end of 2020, it was effectively destroyed and closed by state law enforcement agencies. The largest information portal of the opposition is TUT.BY, whose monthly audience is 20 million readers. In December 2020, TUT.BY was deprived of media status, and its journalist Kateryna Borysevych was sentenced to six months in prison in March for telling about the lack of alcohol in the blood of the deceased Minsk resident Roman Bondarenko: her article contradicted the official statement that Roman was drunk.
On the data of "Telegram Analytics" and "Google Trends," we will consider the most popular opposition Telegram channels based on the structural-functional analysis and network approach. The main Telegram channels of protests in Belarus were "Nexta TV," "Nexta Live," "Belarus of the Brain," "My Country Belarus," "Charter'97%", "Bypol", and "Cyber-Partisans". The Nexta channel was created on April 19, 2018, in Poland by Belarusian blogger Stepan Putilo. The resource publishes photos, videos and texts of protests, as well as guidelines for organizing obstruction and non-violent actions in Belarus. As of October 28, 2021, the Nexta channel has 437,493 subscribers. Coverage of 1 publication is 175 thousand people. Daily coverage - 3.8 million people. The channel viewing statistics by month for 2021 are presented in Fig. 7.
"Nexta Live" was created on February 14, 2019 by Stepan Putilo. Until September 27, 2020, the channel's editor was Roman Protasevych, and the journalist was Kateryna Yerusalimska. During the period of maximum protests in August 2020, it was the most popular media resource of the opposition, which published news, calls for the overthrow of the government, crimes of law enforcement, and action programs for the short and long term. As of October 28, 2021, the Nexta Live channel has 928,356,000 subscribers. Coverage of 1 publication is 313 thousand people. Daily coverage is 2.1 million people. The channel viewing statistics by month for 2021 are presented in Fig. 8.
"Belarus of the Brain" is an opposition Telegram-news channel, created on May 15, 2016. As of October 28, 2021, the channel has 92,000 subscribers. Coverage of 1 publication is 71 thousand people. Daily coverage is 1.1 million people. The channel viewing statistics by months for 2021 are presented in Fig. 9.
"My Country Belarus", - the channel was created on November 20, 2017 by the opposition journalist of "Radio Svoboda" Serhiy Bespalov. The resource covers news about protests, crimes of law enforcement officers. Coverage of 1 publication is 28 thousand people. Daily coverage is 436 thousand people. The channel viewing statistics by months for 2021 are presented in Fig. 10.
“Khartiia’97%” is the nationalist channel of Belarus’s largest opposition news portal. The public page in Telegram was created on January 31, 2018 after the blockade of the news portal Sharter97.org in Belarus on January 24, 2018. Opposition news and protests are published on the resource. Coverage of 1 publication is 26 thousand people. Daily coverage is 1.7 million people. The channel viewing statistics by months for 2021 are presented in Fig. 11.
“Bypol” is a channel of former law enforcement officers. Investigations into law enforcement crimes during protests and de-anonymization of law enforcement officers are published. As of October 28, 2021, the channel has 49 thousand subscribers. Coverage of 1 publication is 70 thousand people. Daily coverage is 52 thousand people. The channel viewing statistics by months for 2021 are presented in Fig. 12.
“Cyber-Partisans” is a channel of the hacker opposition community. It is created in September 2020. Information from the hacked provald resources is published. As of October 28, 2021, the channel has 74,000 subscribers. Coverage of 1 publication is 81 thousand people, daily coverage is 70 thousand people. The statistics of views by months in 2021 are presented in Fig. 13.
Thanks to the Telegram messenger, the organizers of the protests in Belarus were able to unite the country's disparate activity into a single flow of information. Scattered in space and time, the actions were formed into a leading continuous tape, creating the effect of mass for the reader. The images of protest were formed on the principles that researchers E.V. Brodovska and A.Yu. Dombrovska was identified as a compositional and mobilizing model of information. That is, there is a direct link between the activity of protesters and the amount of published material in the communication space.
Also, as we can see from the pictures, the activity of channel subscribers decreased after the winter attenuation of protests. We will note changes in May and August. This is explained by the main themes - the forced landing of the RyanAir plane and the detention of Roman Protasevich in May and the anniversary of the protests in August. It is worth noting that during 2021, all these channels were considered extremist in Belarus, and for subscribing to them, citizens are persecuted and imprisoned, so this year there was a significant reduction in the audience of the channels compared to 2020.
Thanks to Socialblade, we will analyze the key opposition channels on YouTube. The key opposition channels on this platform are NEXTA, NEXTA Live, BELSAT NEWS and BYPOL - Association of Belarusian Security Forces.
Let's start with "NEXTA". The channel was created on October 4, 2015. The channel publishes streams of interviews with key opposition figures, journalistic investigations, Belarusian news and protests, and the most popular are the investigation films "Lukashenko. "Golden Bottom" and "Golden Bottom 2: in the shadow of the dictator", which together watched on this channel 8.6 million times as of October 28, 2021. It is worth noting that these films were later published on other channels, including and foreign. All video channels have 146, 1 million views. The statistics of views can be seen in fig. 14.
“NEXTA Live” was registered on March 19, 2014. The channel publishes news and analytical videos. All videos of the channel have 28.1 million views. The statistics of views can be seen in fig. 15.
“BELSAT NEWS” was registered on June 23, 2008. The channel broadcasts BelSat TV channel live, as well as videos of Belarusian news and journalistic investigations. All videos of the channel have 352.2 million views. The statistics of views can be seen in fig. 16.
"BYPOL - the union of security forces of Belarus" was created on November 3, 2020. The channel publishes investigations into law enforcement agencies in Belarus. All videos of the channel have 9.7 million views. The statistics of views can be seen in fig. 17.
The five-ring model can also represent the informational and psychological influence of opposition forces:
As we can see, the difference in influence is that the opposition is trying to have more influence on law enforcement and life support systems to reduce the influence of the current regime and take over the key players in the confrontation.
For an example of testing and verification of the method and relevant software, let's take the informational reason - the detention of Belarusian opposition journalist Roman Protasevich on May 23, 2021 during the forced landing of the “Ryanair Sun” plane at Minsk airport. The mathematical apparatus of the developed method was published in [9-13]. Information messages from the information field of social networks Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki, Facebook, Instagram, and Telegram from May 23 to June 20, 2021 were used for evaluation. Four experts were involved in the evaluation, and the system offered to evaluate information messages according to the following parameters: Growth of the factor of anxiety (GAF), Public reaction (PR), Completeness and strength of argument (VD), Number of affected targets (NAT), Associations that cause the source of information (CSA). Let's consider how the process of assessing the criticality of state information resources according to one of the experts took place. 76 reports were offered for evaluation, which the software identified as the most common.
Scores by parameters were distributed as follows:
( EpLg ELq )(хELq1 хELq ) , (g 2, z) , z – number of components Т~EepLs . A similar procedure is performed with the current values of the criticality level. Next, we determine the generalized distance of Heming.
z h (Т~EepLs , LC~Sp ) = xEepLsg xLCSg = | xEepLs1 xLCS1 | + | xEepLs2 xLCS2 | + … + | xEepLsg p p p g1
p p xLCSg | + … + | xEepLsz xLCSz |, where (g 1,z) , (s 1, r) . The criterion of compliance LCS with one of the terms of the evaluation ~ standard is the shortest distance of Heming. Thus, the appropriate level corresponds to the level of criticality of the situation or IPKS. Our CSA parameter after the calculation will have the following fuzzy numbers [13-15], which characterize its criticality: Н_csa = { 0/0,33; 1,92/0,33, 1,2/0,75; 0,82/1; 0/1} С_csa = { 0/0,33; 1,76/0,33, 8/0,75; 4,56/1; 0/1} В_csa = { 0/0,33; 0,74/0,33, 1,68/0,75; 2,24/1; 0/1}
In our case, it is evident that the level of criticality in the CSA parameter will belong to the "Average", and its indicator will be { 0/0,33; 1,76/0,33, 8/0,75; 4,56/1; 0/1}. It should be noted that this indicator has already been calculated with the criticality indicator, which is shown in [11]. We will remind the given values: Table 3 Coefficients of importance of parameters
Growth the factor of anxiety EepLsg = (3)
Completeness and strength of argument Number of affected targets Associations that cause the source of information
In addition, to better display the level of criticality, it is proposed to display the criticality parameters using the criticality indicator. For this purpose the corresponding parameters Le should be pre-phase-defasified. The most appropriate in this case is the use of the method of the center of gravity, where LF is converted into a clear formula
q q L ( xLq * (xLq ) / (xLq ) )
i=1 i=1 where q – number of calipers LF.
After dephasification, the qualitative criticality index of the CSA will be
{ 0/0,33; 1,76/0,33, 8/0,75; 4,56/1; 0/1} = 3,26
The criticality index is calculated similarly for other parameters. After dephasification, the parameters will have the following critical values: (4) (5) The total criticality index is calculated by finding the arithmetic mean criticality of the parameters:
P = CSA+GAF+PR+VD+NAT = 20,33
That is, information messages of public authorities have shown high criticism, ie efficiency.
Given the above, we can conclude that public information resources completely dominate in the offline space, and the opposition is online [16-21]. This may indicate that the elderly population of Belarus is probably not in favor of protests and changes in the country, unlike the young population [22], the main source of information is the Internet. That is, opposition resources emphasize the inclination of the more active part of the population, which is why the threat of resumption of largescale actions is high. Therefore, large-scale repressions seem logical against opposition leaders by Belarusian law enforcement agencies aimed at seizing information resources, intimidating more active groups of the population, and expelling them, at least from the territory of the country.
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