Trump and COVID-19 Fuel North Macedonia’s Clickbait Boom

Karatseva left the website two months ago, not long after the owners announced an editorial shift towards political and coronavirus-related news.

“They gave us a list of sources, mostly very questionable sources, from Russia and Serbia, and the US and Croatia as well,” she recalled.

“Domestic news was also included, we were told that we should do news not just about every comment that the minister of health made on live TV or on Twitter or Facebook or in the press, but also even from the comments made about him. That attracts readers, the management said.”

She showed BIRN some of the articles that the site has been publishing recently – some of them praising the authorities’ COVID-19 policies, others condemning them; some of them advocating the idea of protecting oneself from the virus, others pushing conspiracy theories about it.

Indeed, conspiracy theories have become profitable online content in the age of the coronavirus.

Vasko, Meglen, and Vera are all 21-year-old students from Skopje and their job is to translate conspiracy theories from YouTube or other video platforms. BIRN is not naming the company in order to protect their anonymity.

At the company where they work, the employees are divided into two teams: one team of makes transcripts of conspiracy videos from YouTube, while the second team picks up news ideas from the videos and writes short articles or social media posts promoting the conspiracy theory.

“The stories are [about the] ‘deep state’ – anti-liberal, anti-government no matter where, anti-NGO, anti-international institutions like the IMF, the UN, the EU, NATO and, most recently, mostly COVID-does-not-exist conspiracies,” Vasko explained.

He said he found the job four years ago through adverts on LinkedIn and Freelancer.com seeking content writers. Several of his friends, mostly students, also signed up.

“I can earn like $1,500 for like nothing, no brain involved. But I study philosophy and there is a pattern in what we translate. We do not know what the company does this for, but during the COVID-19 crisis I’ve noticed some of the headlines I personally created in some shitty English-language media,” he said.

The company is registered outside North Macedonia and creates clickbait content to order, mostly for right-wing libertarian clients.

“Sorry about this,” he said, “but we’re doing it for the money.”

Saska Cvetkovska is an investigative reporter and media freedom activist. She is a co-founder of Investigative Reporting Lab – Macedonia, an OCCRP member center that fights disinformation with investigative reporting that uses interdisciplinary approaches, including technology and academic research. She serves at the Board of Directors of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting project. She was a lead reporter on investigstive project Spooks and Spin — Information Wars in the Balkans, about how Macedonia became a haven for propaganda.  Saska has won more than ten domestic and international journalism awards. In 2018 she was elected by Macedonian journalists to represent them on the board of directors of the Association of Journalists of Macedonia, an organization that works to improve working conditions for reporters in the country.

This article has been produced as part of the Resonant Voices Initiative in the EU, funded by the European Union’s Internal Security Fund – Police. The content of this story is the sole responsibility of BIRN. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

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