NUNS: Cyber and bot attacks on media must stop at the height of the election campaign

Concern over organized cyber and bot attacks on media in Serbia was expressed today by the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (NUNS), as the newspaper Danas reports. According to the association, in recent days accounts and websites of several media outlets, journalists, photojournalists and activists have been targeted by coordinated attacks.

Particularly worrying, according to NUNS, is the fact that these attacks occur in the midst of an intense election campaign, when citizens need unhindered access to accurate and verifiable information about the activities of all election participants.

As examples, NUNS mentions the Instagram profile of the Mašina portal, which in a short time was followed by around 10,000 accounts suspected to be fake. Because of the risk that the profile could be restricted or closed, the editors called on readers to also follow the backup account @masina.video — but soon announced that this account too was being attacked in the same way. The profile of photographer Gavril Andrić, accounts of other activists and profiles of several local media have also come under similar bot attacks, Danas reports.

The attack mechanism is simple: a massive and sudden influx of fake followers can trigger the social networks’ automatic mechanisms and lead to reduced visibility, restriction of functions or complete closure of the account — even though their owners have not violated the platforms’ rules.

NUNS also mentioned the Kovinske info portal, whose website was cyber-attacked, while the Vranje njuz portal had earlier informed the public about similar problems.

According to the journalists’ association, these attacks hinder or make impossible the work of newsrooms and access to their content, directly violating the public’s right to be informed. Since Serbia is at the height of the election campaign, there is a well-founded suspicion that the attacks are linked to the reporting of media, journalists and photojournalists, as well as to the activity of individuals documenting events related to the electoral process. NUNS also warns that there is a real risk that such attacks, together with other forms of pressure, will continue and increase in the coming period, especially in the online space.

The organization of such attacks during the election campaign is not simply a technical problem of individual newsrooms, the association stresses: their consequences may be the removal of important sources of information from the public space, making journalists’ work more difficult and narrowing citizens’ opportunities to make informed decisions in elections. Citizens’ right to receive timely and reliable information about political actors, their programs and activities is one of the basic preconditions for free and democratic elections, NUNS concludes.