Portal Vijesti dominated in readership and in the number of comments in the period from February 15 to March 15, it was announced from the Center for Civic Education (CGO).
The non-governmental organization (NGO) said that from February 15 to March 15, they monitored comments on portals in Montenegro in order to make a qualitative and quantitative assessment of compliance with the new Law on Media, especially Articles 34-39 of that Law.
They said that the detailed findings indicate that the legal solution, and especially Articles 34-39 of that Law, unfortunately still did not have an effect on the decontamination of the comments area on the portals.
"The current Media Act entered into force in August of last year, and it introduces a novelty in the part of the portal's obligation to, under the threat of misdemeanor liability, remove comments of illegal content within 60 minutes of becoming aware of it, i.e. reporting by a person. This should have worked as well preventively in the part of finding modalities and the portals themselves to proactively act in relation to such comments.
They stated that the CGO team reviewed daily comments on 10 portals in Montenegro (Vijesti, CdM, Analitika, RTCG, AntenaM, In4S, Pobjeda, Aktuelno, Standard and Borba), and that on two texts each, chosen according to the criteria of the most commented or most read texts on that portal, i.e. at the personal choice of the monitor for those portals where such measurement is not available.
"During the monitoring, which lasted 29 days, a total of 31.945 comments were reviewed, which were within 580 texts or 58 texts per portal, with an average of 1101.55 comments per monitoring day, or 55.08 comments per text," the CGO statement reads.
The NGO said that the Vijesti portal dominated both in readership and in the number of comments, so the largest number of viewed comments was on that portal, i.e. a total of 14.960 comments or 46.83%.
"Followed by the CdM portals with 6.654 comments (20.82%) and In4S with 3.189 comments (9.98%). The Borba portal is next with 1.715 comments (5.36%), then the Analitika portals with 1.438 comments (4.5%) and RTCG with 1.354 comments (4.24 Furthermore, the Pobjeda portal had 1.171 comments (3.66%), while the AntenaM portal had 1.040 comments (3.25%). The Aktuelno and Standard portals had the lowest number of comments in the selected texts, which had 358 comments (1.12%). , i.e. 66 comments (0.2%)," the statement of the CGE points out.
The CGE also said that the monitoring included the period before the local elections in the Municipality of Nikšić, as well as the day after the end of those elections.
"The dynamics of current social and political events also dictated the number of comments on the portals, and apart from the election in Nikšić, the most attention in the comments was attracted by the events in the Municipality of Tuzi, when citizens protested the new closure of catering facilities in that municipality, then the arrival of the first vaccines in Montenegro, the departure of the Montenegrin delegation to the funeral of SPC bishop Atanasi, but also the protest events in Cetinje related to several activities of the Government," said the CGE.
They also stated that the so-called bot's comments, which, according to CGO, usually followed texts that mentioned the president of Serbia, and which were specific in terms of form and content in which support for the president of Serbia was expressed.
"The number of comments varied daily, and of the selected articles during monitoring, there were a small number of those that did not generate comments, and that was on portals that generally have a smaller number of comments. Of the ten selected articles with the highest number of comments, all were on the Vijesti portal. In relation to the reviewed articles per portal, the most commented article on the Vijesti portal had 678 comments, on the CdM portal 288 comments, on the In4S portal 183 comments, on the RTCG portal 113 comments and on the AntenaM portal 87 comments. Followed by the Borba portal with 86 comments, the Pobjeda portal with 73. comments, the Analitika portal with 70 comments, the Aktuelno portal with 22 comments and the Standard portal with four comments on the most commented text," said CGO.
The announcement also states that the analysis of the content of those comments indicates that there were no portals that were free of comments with illegal content.
"The narrative of the comments depended on the portal and on the current topics, but also on the person who made the statement, that is, the person to whom the text refers. In the context of Article 36 of the Law on Media, which prohibits discriminatory content or content with hate speech against a certain group , were dominated by comments with hate speech on a national basis, directed mostly towards persons of Montenegrin and Serbian nationality. Comments with hate speech on a religious basis were also noticeable, and there were also comments with hate speech against persons belonging to the LGBT population. The most violations of this Article of the Law was recorded on the In4S portal, where there were as many as 45 texts with comments on controversial content within the framework of this article, followed by the CdM portal with 42 texts, the AntenaM portal with 41 texts, the Pobjeda portal with 40 texts and the Vijesti portal with the same number In the context of other articles of the Media Law, especially articles 34-39 of that law (except for article 36, which was analyzed separately), a large number of illegalities were also determined. There, the comments that contradict Article 34, which guarantees the presumption of innocence, are highlighted, then the comments that contradict Article 38, paragraph 6, which defends hidden advertising, while the most represented comments with the content of a large number of insults, which contradict with Article 39 of the Law, which prohibits the publication of information that harms honor and reputation. The largest number of texts with comments whose content violates the aforementioned articles of the law was registered on the Borba portal, where 51 texts contained comments with illegal content, followed by the In4S portal with 43 texts, the Vijesti portal with 42 texts, the CdM portal with 41 texts and the portal Analytics with 35 texts with comments of illegal content," CGO said.
The NGO also said that the monitoring of comments on information portals was carried out as part of the "Media for me!" project, which is implemented by the CGO with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Embassy of the Kingdom of Norway and the Balkan Fund for Democracy of the German Marshall Fund of the USA (BTD).
Bonus video:
