Nino Dolidze is a civil activist and Executive Director of the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), a key election watchdog in Georgia. She talked to EUvsDisinfo about the ramifications of the ‘foreign agents’ law for civil society and the increasing challenge of disinformation and information manipulation targeting Georgia.
How would you assess the current mood in civil society in Georgia among all the recent changes, including the adoption of the ‘foreign agents’ law?
It has not been an easy time for Georgia’s civil society these last two months because the government reintroduced the so-called ‘foreign agents’ law. A law that will restrict NGOs and label those receiving foreign funding as ‘foreign agents’. The ruling party Georgian Dream introduced the law in 2023, but had to withdraw it after people took to the streets. This time, unfortunately, the law was adopted. Civil society organisations (CSOs) in Georgia really tried a lot to push back this legislation.
They did so for several reasons. This legislation affects civil society and free media in the country directly. It also affects Georgia’s foreign policy trajectory towards EU integration. On top of that, it illustrates our democratic backsliding. We were fighting not only for ourselves and to save our civil society, but also to save Georgia’s foreign policy. We have been supporting Georgian European integration since our independence and ever since we were established as a CSO.
The mood in Georgia is that it is very unfortunate and everybody realises that the government did not consider either the Georgian people’s will, or our international partners’ recommendations. That is why now everybody is preparing for the parliamentary elections, including CSOs that usually would not work on elections. Everybody is really trying to get involved in the process to support free and fair elections, to support voter education, or to support our work as election observers. Therefore, our mood is now again one of fighting for freedom, democracy, and European integration. It is our country’s future for which we will fight, for our country’s democratic development and our European future, because we do not want to go back.
How would you describe the amount of knowledge in Georgia on the effect on foreign policy of the foreign agents law? Do most people know that this might have repercussions on the trajectory towards EU accession?
I would say that most of the people do understand that this legislation was not only against CSOs, but also against Georgia’s EU integration. However, media is very polarised in Georgia and our pro-government media is using their propaganda machine to hide how much this law will damage our European future. On the other hand, there are digital media showing reality. It is very evident how much young people are fighting against this legislation. These are people who were born in free Georgia. They have access not only to national sources of information, but also from outside the country.
Of course, there are people, especially pro-government citizens who believe the government’s message [of] moving towards the EU, but only with dignity, and without interference in our sovereignty. Fortunately, a big part of society understands better. I think proof of that was the two months of non-stop demonstrations in Georgia. This showed how well the Georgian people understand the problem and how much Georgians are willing to defend the country’s future.
Do you think this situation and the awareness of what the ‘foreign agents’ law does to Georgia will lead to more voters participating in the elections?
I think these elections will have one of the highest turnouts in years because so many people are asking about the election procedures on how to participate. We have not seen that before. For example, some people are asking about how they should change their address because they came from other cities or rural areas and now they live in Tbilisi. In addition, many emigrants are approaching ISFED and asking questions about how they can participate in the elections. We are trying to educate and do ‘go out to vote’ campaigns, and support other events. So let us see at the end of October.
How big of a role does disinformation play, from your perspective, in the current situation?
Unfortunately, there is a lot of information manipulation and disinformation in Georgia, especially on pro-government media and social networks. There are huge amounts of money spent on this propaganda and information manipulation.
In Georgia, most people use social networks, especially Facebook, to get information. In Meta’s Adversarial Threat Report for the first quarter of 2023, they report that they deleted 80 accounts connected to the Georgian government due to coordinated inauthentic behaviour. This was convincing evidence that governmental actors spread disinformation and propaganda to discredit civil society organisations, media, and opposition. It illustrates the scope of the problem, and how much money is spent on it.
Another problem I would like to address is that disinformation we previously saw was mainly home-grown, but since last year, manipulative networks we encountered were not from Georgia, but from Russia. These networks were created outside the country, and the language and messages used were not ‘very Georgian’. These accounts also spread disinformation directed against CSOs and the opposition, while supporting pro-government actors. We are very afraid that foreign information manipulation and interference will be high during these elections, not only from internal actors but also from Russia.
Do you think that disinformation or information manipulation also played a role in the passing of the law?
I think so. It is very difficult to measure the actual effect of disinformation, but unfortunately, it seems the propaganda machine worked. For example, this legislation has been using ‘transparency’ as part of their biggest disinformation narrative. Claiming that the government is already transparent but the law is necessary to show how much money Georgian civil society organisations are getting and how they are spending this money. However, you can easily access any webpage of any prominent civil society organisation, including ours, to see how much funds they are receiving from donors. We publish annual reports that include all information about the annual budget and spending. We make monthly declarations to the revenue services about our income. So there is no question about the ‘transparency’ of civil society organisations.
Unfortunately, the government, pro-government actors, media and so-called experts used the narrative in their disinformation campaign against CSOs. Of course, there were people who believed it. Who does not want transparency? Therefore, some people were very receptive to this narrative. To sum up: the ‘transparency’ narrative worked on a small part of the population, but the biggest part of society soon realised that it was only a propaganda narrative.
I think Georgia is at a crossroads now and that the result of the elections in October will define many things for the future. If the sitting government wins and the legislation remains in effect, they can really silence our voices. Civil society organisations will likely have to leave the country, including our organisation. If that happens, Georgia’s progress will be undone because all progressive, open-minded people will be forced to continue their work outside of the country.
We are already looking into how to survive this existential threat. It is also possible that the government already starts implementing the legislation before the elections. In that case they can freeze our accounts, or give us fines or other obstructive penalties. We still do not know how they are going to monitor what we do. Are they going to ‘visit’ our organisation demanding to see documents or equipment? We have no idea how much they want to do to stop our work in the run up to and during the elections. It can become very difficult even to observe the elections, let alone to campaign.
We are preparing ourselves for the worst-case scenario, but I believe that Georgia will not go in the wrong direction. The Georgian people have very good senses, they are not always active, but when they really fear the threat of the future, they act in the right manner.
We would like to go back to one of the reports that you issued a while ago about anti-EU narratives. The message from different disinformation actors, including the Georgian government, was about the EU contributing to the degradation of the family and traditional values. Sexual or gender diversity was also portrayed as something that threatens Georgian traditional values – by the way, a narrative that we know from many other countries in the Eastern neighbourhood of the EU. Could you elaborate on your work on this type of disinformation?
As you rightly mentioned, unfortunately not only Georgians have experience in people using nationalistic conservative narratives and religious narratives against Western values. We have seen this for quite a long time now, but recently we have seen a sharp rise in this kind of disinformation narrative. Especially since Georgia became an EU candidate and since Russia’s war against Ukraine. In general, when we get closer to the EU, the amount of disinformation also increases very clearly. We brought this up in our first report published at the end of 2022, when we saw this huge spike in anti-Western narratives here in Georgia. The government criticised us a lot for that report because it exposed all these anti-EU, anti-human rights defending, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-minorities narratives being spread by pro-governmental media.
We are working on all disinformation narratives that are spread in Georgian politics and society. That would be anti-LGBTQ narratives, anti-gender, but also religious narratives. Religion is very often used in anti-Western narratives arguing that the EU is taking our religion. I can give an example in which I was personally attacked. During Catholic Christmas, I posted a congratulatory post on social media, and when I had not posted anything yet on Orthodox Christmas, pro-government media attacked me for celebrating only Catholic Christmas and not Orthodox. It was funny for me to see how they used this in their narratives, but to think that this was the topic on a TV show is really hard to imagine. We look at the developments in the narratives we encounter, and we issue reports on those topics. Unfortunately, we also see that these narratives are working, for example, the LGBTQ narrative. The difficult part is that Georgian people are actually quite tolerant and pro-human rights but simultaneously Georgia is also quite a conservative, traditional, and orthodox country. This makes some people receptive to the narrative. But I would say our society is progressing, disinformation works less now than it used to work ten or twenty years ago. The same about gender stereotypes. Now people are more gender-sensitive than ten years ago.
How should we counter these narratives?
We need more research, and more experiments on how these narratives work, but also on how they can be debunked. Right now, we have no effective tools to debunk the narratives. We are just monitoring them but we do not have the mechanisms to take preventative measures. If we have more insight on this, then we can answer them more. Besides investing more in research, we should also look into concrete country experiences. International experience is very helpful, but in every society, there is special behaviour to take into account. After disinformation has spread, it is hard to repair the damage it has done. Therefore, I argue that different CSOs, academia, experts sit together and try to create preventive measures.
In terms of addressing disinformation, is there anything you tried that didn’t work, in Georgia? Do you have any good or bad practices to share?
I think we made some mistakes in our early approach, civil society organisations and democracy defenders in general, including our partners in the EU. Whenever we saw small signs of disinformation, I think we should have acted immediately. For example, whenever there were false claims that the EU would drag Georgia into the war or similar narratives, I think we did not respond properly. Meanwhile for the ruling party it became easier to say whatever they wanted. We should have stopped them at in this initial phase to underline that it is unacceptable to spread these narratives. Generally, I think that all hints of democratic backsliding or spreading disinformation or information manipulation should be immediately addressed in order to avoid the narrative growing larger.
How would you assess the vulnerabilities of society, as far as disinformation on or information manipulation is concerned? Where should civil society invest more?
If you look at the polls, keeping in mind that they are no exact measure, on one side you see the progressive part of the society, who tend not to believe disinformation and do check the information they see. On the other side, you see the part of society that supports the government and has very conservative ideas. Then there is the middle that is more or less able to change their ideas and opinions. I think we should work more to build the resilience of this middle part of society because it can be more affected by disinformation. Georgian schools, for example, do not have a special subject about critical thinking or analysis. We should support critical thinking, analysis, fact checking in that part of the society, and look for new ways to increase their resilience.
We should also invest more in reaching a larger audience. Most of our work remains quite elite and fits in a certain bubble. It does not really reach ordinary citizens. I understand that ordinary citizens who are busy with their daily work, or might have economic problems and other problems to worry about, are not interested in the things we share about disinformation. But we have to find out ways to reach these people to ensure that they are aware of disinformation.
What do organisations like ISFED need right now?
The thing we ask most from our community now is more flexibility. We are depending on funds for our work, and most of the donors ask us to implement certain projects, but due to the changing situation, we sometimes need to change our plans. We would like modify our grants as crowdfunding in order to have more flexibility with the budgets.
We ask for help against physical threats to CSO leaders and representatives. Recently after a rally, CSO leaders were beaten up. I was fortunately not beaten, but these people came to the ISFED office, and also to my home and posted posters saying: ‘traitor of the nation’. They came right to my front door, verbally harassing me and my two kids. So it is not only me, but also my father, my sister, my kids.
Supporting civil society activists and leaders is very important. The high-level statements, the visits, the communication about these visits do really work. However, it is also very important how a society supports defenders of democracy in the country. Especially during pre-election time, this will be very important. The attacks will continue, not only against me and my organisation, but also against our people on the ground in regions and villages. We need very clear messages about the elections and not only in diplomatic language. We understand this language, but not everyone we are trying to reach understands. And again, do not give the floor to any undemocratic narrative from the beginning. That is crucial.
Article and pictures first time published on the EUvsDisinfo web page. Prepared for publication by volunteers from the Res Publica - The Center for Civil Resistance.
