Plenković just as Vučić: HDZ uses bots against opposition and citizens

20. February 2024.
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Source: HINA/Lana SLIVAR DOMINIĆ and Gong

Gong's analysis has revealed that a multitude of bots, programs that automatically perform tasks with the aim of mimicking human activity, are providing support for HDZ's insults against the opposition on Facebook and manipulating citizens in the crucial election year. Jerko Jere Kotarac, Tino Topić Top, and Tomo Toky Marinković are some of the profiles liking posts on the official Facebook page of HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union, party in power in Croatia), which in actuality are party bots—fake profiles with stolen profile pictures.

After the protest of 11 opposition parties, held on February 17th in Zagreb, HDZ insulted the opposition in their official Facebook page's posts, referring to them as "leftists seeking trouble," "unleashed angry revolutionaries," and "Russophiles." In doing so, they essentially degraded all citizens who supported the protest as "lazy, non-workers, Putin fans, destructors, and anti-patriots," with their posts being accompanied by a large number of likes from HDZ followers.

Upon reviewing the HDZ Facebook page, we noticed that their posts are commented on, liked, and shared by numerous profiles with unusually low followers and activities. Although these profiles may seem like private profiles of citizens at first glance, all of them are registered as pages, belonging to unrelated categories: such as comedian, satire, music, health and beauty, and more. Additionally, the creation date of these pages is more often than not the same, with several profiles created on dates like June 13th 2023, and February 9th 2024.

All of these are signs which indicate artificially gaining favor and creating an impression of popularity through the use of bots. When a profile is registered as a page, it allows for the easy use of a chatbot to automate its communication. Bots can perform various tasks, such as posting new content, commenting on content, and liking posts to express confirmation or approval.

Google Image Search: HDZ fans are actually "random guys" from the internet

By running the profile pictures of these pages through Google Image Search, we determined that they are not the original photos of these pages, but rather, images of various profiles floating around for the past ten years on X, Pinterest, and various forums. For example, the profile picture of the page Martin Filipović, established on June 13th 2023, is actually a popular humorous photo of a man from 2013, posing in a leather jacket in front of a camera, while the mirror behind him shows it to be the only clothing he is wearing. Another example is the profile picture of the page Jerko Jere Kotarac, established on October 19th 2023, which is in fact a photo taken from an English-speaking rapper's videos from the same year, showcasing his rapid rap skills in five short YouTube videos. All of this can be seen in the proof provided below:

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Although not active on their "own" profiles, these bots are often active in the comments under HDZ's Facebook posts, where they consistently praise the decisions of Plenković's party, while criticizing and insulting the opposition. Some examples of insulting the opposition include calling them "ordinary savages of inarticulate sounds instead of speech," "opposition waste," and "a group of people who want the destruction of Croatia, shameful." Examples of such statements can be found in the attached evidence:

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Gong: This is astroturfing and public manipulation

Considering that citizens do not engage in this kind of advanced account detection while consuming social media content, they are in danger of gaining a false impression of the massiveness of support for certain ideas and views. Such attempts to manipulate awareness through fake profiles are called astroturfing, creating the illusion of spontaneous and natural support for a political party, and thus attempting to attract voter support. Gong consider this to be an unethical and non-transparent political campaign, as well as a case of public manipulation, because it artificially creates the impression of broad support for the ruling option, ahead of the official start of the election campaign, despite numerous corruption scandals surrounding Andrej Plenković's government.

Similar techniques and methods were used by Aleksandar Vučić in his election campaign to such an extent, that 8,000 fake profiles praising the deeds of the Serbian president were eventually removed from the X platform.

Although it was not specifically addressed in this analysis, the communication style of HDZ is in itself questionable. Their official communication has already been the subject of Gong's analysis due to its insulting discourse, which is unbecoming of mainstream parties and undermines democratic political culture.

At the end of 2023, Gong published an analysis of the insulting discourse in the communication of HDZ on Facebook. The official Facebook page of HDZ has been publishing content marked by such discourse for three years, consistently belittling, mocking, and calling out various political actors with a language more fitting for harsh anonymous internet comments, concluded the author, Matej Mikašinović-Komšo.

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