Author: Tajana Broz, program coordinator at Faktograf
Contributors: Sanja Despot, editor-in-chief of Faktograf.hr; Petar Vidov, editor-in chief of The Climate Portal; Ana Brakus, executive director of Faktograf and Jelena Berković, policy advisor at Faktograf.
Reviewer: Mato Brautovic, PhD; Professor; University of Dubrovnik.
Updated on 16/12/2024
Introduction
- Numerous studies on social trust in Croatia indicate a low level of trust, with Croatian citizens placing more trust in security institutions such as the military than in representative democratic institutions such as the parliament or government. Trust in the media follows a similar pattern. Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2024 states that trust in news in Croatia continues to decline. It declined from a peak of 45% in 2021 (COVID-19 increase) to 32% in 2024. TV remains an important source of news in Croatia (63%), well ahead of social media (47%), while print’s position today (20%) is less than half of what it was eight years ago (43%). Online news, including social media, is a source for 80% of people, but only 9% pay for online news. The top social, messaging, and video networks for news in Croatia are Facebook (49%), YouTube (24%), and WhatsApp (18%).
- According to the Media Pluralism Monitor 2023, Croatia has a medium risk score in three areas: Fundamental Protection (53%), Political Independence (60%), Social Inclusiveness (59%) and high risk in Market Plurality (68%). The results in the last several years have been relatively consistent across all areas.
- According to the official data from the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Media and Culture in the period of 2016 – 2023 there were 3.114 civil proceedings filed against journalists for damages and 421 filed criminal lawsuits. Officials claim that out of the total number of lawsuits against journalists, 79 could be characterized as SLAPP. According to a survey conducted by the Croatian Journalists’ Association, there were at least 945 active lawsuits against media outlets, editors, and journalists in 2023 in Croatia. Based on the same survey, 910 of them are for damages for defamation, amounting to a total of at least 5.4 million euros, while the rest are criminal cases. According to data by The Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe (CASE), Croatia is among the top EU countries regarding the number of SLAPPs against various watchdogs.
- Disinformation ecosystems in Croatia are relatively stable and consist of a range of, mostly far-right, political actors and publicly known individuals, as well as anonymous profiles and pages on social media. Additionally, there are fringe media that promote conspiracy theories and far-right media focused on disinformation narratives about climate change, gender equality, science, migration and similar issues. Faktograf’s Analysis of climate misinformation (2024), as well as the report ‘Mapping Climate Disinformation Ecosystem in Croatia and Slovenia’ (2024), have shown a significant overlap between actors who’ve spread disinformation about COVID-19 and those who are now spreading disinformation about climate change.
- Over the past year, we have recorded an increasing presence of synthetic or digitally altered disinformation aimed at financial fraud or stealing personal data. Most commonly, these are synthetic or digitally altered videos, made with the assistance of generative AI tools, which present the likings of journalists, politicians, or scientists trying to convince citizens to buy stocks, bitcoins, or some miracle cure. Besides scams, the only detected cases of AI-generated content involving political figures were humorous and satirical audio and video clips. There were no appearances of AI-generated disinformation intended to malignantly influence the election process. One political party created an “AI politician” for the parliamentary elections campaign, as an educational tool to highlight the dangers of AI.
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The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of EU DisinfoLab. This factsheet does not represent an endorsement by EU DisinfoLab of any organisation.
