Expert raises the alarm: Fake accounts with Albanian names incited violence, a coordinated campaign with Serb-Russian elements

Calls for violence and political clashes on social media have increased in recent days, while a number of Facebook accounts have been identified that repeatedly spread inciting messages against institutions, MPs, protesters and journalists.

According to research by cybersecurity expert Halil Berisha, some of these accounts acted in a coordinated manner, publishing identical or very similar comments on the posts of media outlets and political subjects.

Berisha says the accounts used Albanian names, but on Facebook they were registered as pages with the category “Musician/Band”. In their content, according to him, there appeared calls for the burning of institutions, physical clashes and the punishment of political opponents.

According to Berisha, the intensification of these messages was noticed as the 16 September decision and the developments relating to the Specialist Court approached.

He assesses that the repeated manner of publishing the content and the similarity between the messages present elements of a coordinated campaign.

Berisha has compared this pattern with tactics used in known Russian influence operations. However, this connection has not been independently verified by Radio Free Europe.

“The calls for violence are not only against one side, but are directed at everyone, so that clashes are created on social media and, consequently, violence is incited”, Berisha declared to RFE/RL.

After the research was published, according to Berisha, some of the identified profiles were closed, while others changed their names and identity on Facebook.

According to him, two profiles that had published calls for arson and warnings of “civil war” were closed. Berisha sees the change of identity and the closure of the profiles as a further indication that they did not function authentically.

The expert says that in recent days a marked increase has been observed in content inciting violence, from calls for the burning of institutions and physical attacks, to threats of murder.

However, not all of this content can automatically be characterised as part of a coordinated campaign.

Dema assesses that at this stage it would not be correct for all the cases to be classified as part of a joint operation.

“What we can say is that we see similar behaviour and narratives that are repeated, while some of them are then amplified by other users”, Dema said.

The increase in this content on social media comes at a tense political period, when institutional developments and the issues relating to the Specialist Court have prompted many public reactions and debates in Kosovo.