Imagine a country, Armenia, on the cusp of an important election. Instead of just hearing honest debates and genuine opinions, the air is thick with whispers, half-truths, and outright fabrications. It’s like a playground where some kids are spreading rumors about others, but these aren’t just schoolyard squabbles – they’re part of a sophisticated, and often deceptive, game influencing how an entire nation thinks and votes.
For years, a shadowy online presence called MediaNews has been pumping out stories and opinions, always conveniently aligned with the current Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, or strategically attacking his rivals. Think of it like a carefully constructed puppet show where the puppets are social media accounts. But these aren’t just any puppets; they’re often designed to look like real people, yet a closer look reveals their flimsy strings. Many of these accounts were clearly fakes – they barely had any personal details, and their profile pictures were often either computer-generated images or real women’s photos snatched from elsewhere online. For instance, one account, supposedly belonging to “Sasha Simonyan,” used a picture of an American actress, Sasha Alexander. For a long time, no one knew who was pulling these strings, even though this network had amassed a huge following of nearly 100,000 people on Facebook. It was a digital ghost, influencing public perception without a visible hand.
But then, the excellent detectives at Civilnet, an Armenian news outlet, started digging. Their investigation was like peeling back layers of an onion, and what they found was surprising, if not entirely shocking given the political climate. They traced MediaNews back to none other than Taron Chakhoyan, one of Prime Minister Pashinyan’s top aides. How did they find him? Because, in a classic oversight, Chakhoyan had used his personal contact details – his phone number, home address, and email – to register the website before he even entered politics. It was like leaving behind a business card at the scene of a digital crime. Of course, he’s denied any involvement, but the digital breadcrumbs tell a different story. Artur Papyan, who runs Armenia’s Media Diversity Institute, points out that while this kind of misinformation isn’t entirely new in Armenia, the period leading up to the June 7th parliamentary elections has seen a “significant escalation.” It’s as if the rumor mill went into overdrive. Ani Grigoryan, who leads the fact-checking team at CivilNet, sums it up perfectly: “Everyone is disseminating fake news, everyone is disseminating AI-generated fake videos.” The battlefield of ideas has become incredibly murky.
Beyond the specific case of MediaNews, the landscape of misinformation in Armenia is vast and intricate. It’s a hydra, with heads sprouting from various directions and using diverse methods. Papyan explains that campaigns include “anonymous Telegram channels, TikTok humour videos and AI-generated or manipulated visual content designed to bypass traditional verification mechanisms quickly.” In essence, they’re using every trick in the digital book to spread their messages, making it harder for ordinary people and even seasoned journalists to discern truth from fiction. The sheer volume of this content is staggering; since the beginning of May, there’s been a “tenfold increase,” a surge that conveniently coincided with significant diplomatic events, like the first-ever EU-Armenia summit. This suggests a calculated effort to manipulate public opinion during crucial times. And it’s not just internal forces at play. Experts have identified both domestic and foreign sources, with Russia often cited as a key player. A recent leak from the Social Design Agency, a Russian digital marketing firm, showed a clear, coordinated effort by the Kremlin to sow discord and spread misinformation in various countries, including Armenia, especially in the run-up to their election. One particularly audacious lie, for instance, claimed that Pashinyan had secretly splurged on a luxurious, multi-million-euro mansion in Marseille, France. This was completely false, but the story spread like wildfire across social media, racking up over 10.6 million views. It’s a stark reminder of how quickly and widely disinformation can travel, often overshadowing the truth.
The misinformation campaigns are a chameleon, changing forms and targets. They are not just about pro-government narratives; they also target opposition parties, and vice versa. Ani Grigoryan’s team at Civilnet uncovered another fascinating, and concerning, trend: AI-generated “vox pop” interviews on TikTok. These are videos designed to look like street interviews, but the people and their opinions are entirely fabricated by AI, often created by different opposition parties to attack each other. It’s like a digital smear campaign, where algorithms generate convincing-looking content to discredit rivals. The narratives woven into these campaigns are often designed to touch on deeply sensitive issues, as Papyan notes, aiming to “weaponise local vulnerabilities, historical traumas and existential identity issues.” They exploit fears and prejudices, trying to portray Pashinyan’s ruling Civil Contract party as hostile to traditional Armenian history, identity, and the Church.
A particularly chilling example of this manipulation involved the creation of a fake organization called the “Armenian Queer Union.” In early May, emails from this fictitious group were sent to Armenian media outlets, claiming that a series of LGBTQ+ focused events were about to take place in the country. To lend it an air of legitimacy, the fake group even claimed sponsorship from Pink Armenia, the country’s largest LGBTQ+ organization. This was a calculated move to ignite homophobia, which is unfortunately prevalent in Armenia. Hripsime Kizogyan, Pink Armenia’s executive director, highlights that anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment during the last election led to a tragic increase in violence against the community, culminating in the murder of a trans woman. The current campaign, according to Kizogyan, aimed to frame the Prime Minister and his government as endorsing “LGBT propaganda,” thereby endangering “national values.” This narrative suggested that a pro-LGBTQ+ stance meant the government was “not good for the future of Armenia.” To further fuel this fire, AI-generated images of Pashinyan attending a fake Pride event in Yerevan were circulated online. The deception went even further, with an unknown actor contacting LGBTQ+ activists in other countries, asking them to create content about Pride in Yerevan. Thankfully, some of these activists contacted Pink Armenia to verify the request, and the organization was able to clarify the situation, preventing any videos about the fake event from being published. Kizogyan emphasizes that while the current campaign relies on somewhat crude AI-generated content – with awkward Armenian phrases and easily identifiable fake images – the long-term impact on the LGBTQ+ community is deeply concerning. She fears that such campaigns could “normalise the violence against the LGBTQ+ community,” making people believe it’s acceptable to violate their rights simply out of hatred, especially if they perceive that “this is something that is not being challenged.”
While these elections are awash in misinformation from all sides, Philippe Kalfayan of the International Observatory for Democracy in Armenia points out that the playing field isn’t entirely even. The ruling party, he explains, enjoys a significant advantage: “a kind of protection from the government agreements with groups like Meta – so Facebook, YouTube.” This preferential treatment allows “fabricated” videos supporting the government to linger on these platforms for longer, reaching more eyes and influencing more minds. He cites a particularly potent example: a fabricated video designed to exploit fears of war with Azerbaijan. This video showed masked men, speaking with accents from the Nagorno-Karabakh region, threatening Pashinyan. Kalfayan notes that this video, which is believed to be entirely fake, was widely shared by pro-government media and continues to circulate.
The issue of Nagorno-Karabakh is a deeply painful and sensitive one for Armenians. It’s a long-disputed territory, controlled by Armenians until it was lost to Azerbaijani forces in 2023. A common theme in the current election campaign is the dire warning that another war could erupt if the Civil Contract party doesn’t secure a majority. Pashinyan himself, in March, declared that if the opposition wins, “it will be a war with the loss of not only territory but also sovereignty of the Republic of Armenia.” Kalfayan warns that content like the fabricated video of the masked men from Nagorno-Karabakh has consequences far beyond the election. It evokes deep-seated desires for reclaiming lost territories, and as he puts it chillingly, “that means war.” He emphasizes the gravity of the situation: “This is very dangerous because in the end, we are talking about geopolitics, about potential wars.” The current political landscape in Armenia is thus not merely a contest of ideas, but a perilous battleground where truth is often sacrificed, and the consequences of widespread misinformation could be devastating for the nation’s future.