Anti-Western parties are losing the social media battle in Georgia
Tags: Social Media, Georgia, Facebook, Protest, Government

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Ahead of the 2020 parliamentary elections in Georgia, pro-Western opposition parties are more active on Facebook, have bigger audiences, and spend more resources on political advertisements compared to anti-Western political parties, a DFRLab analysis has found.

Several anti-Western and Russia-friendly parties are taking part in 2020 Georgian parliamentary elections on October 31, and their ideological affiliation and alleged links to the Russian government have created anxiety about the Kremlin’s interference into Georgia’s domestic political processes. An investigative outlet called the Dossier Center, which is led by Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky, recently published leaked documents alleging that the Kremlin is funding the pre-election campaign of the Alliance of Patriots of Georgia political party. Moreover, the Cyber Kmara YouTube channel recently released audio of a phone conversation between Igor Morozov, member of the Russian Federation Council, and Sandro Bregadze, leader of the Georgian March political party. In the audio, Morozov offered to get involved in selling Russian gas in Georgia and earn money from it. This business deal was seen in Tbilisi as part of Kremlin’s attempt to finance the pre-election campaign of Georgian March by means of involving them in business deals. The third Russia-friendly party is Free Georgia, which opposes Georgia’s integration into NATO and is outspoken with its anti-West statements. Lastly, the Georgian Idea political party accused Georgia’s previous government of starting a war against Russia in 2008 and supports direct political dialogue with Russia. Its members also organized and participated in various violent protests.

In view of this, the DFRLab compared the performance of these four parties with the performance of other main political parties running for the elections. The DFRLab selected the 10 biggest Facebook pages of Georgian political parties based on their number of followers. Alliance of Patriots of Georgia and Free Georgia were among top 10 pages. Subsequently, the DFRLab also included Georgian March and Georgian Idea Facebook pages into the selection. As a result, 12 Facebook pages of Georgian political parties were selected for the analysis.

Georgian political parties actively use social networks to maintain engagement with supporters and attract new ones. Business Political Insight interviewed representatives of several Georgian parties, who singled out several advantages of the use of social media in political campaigning. To begin with, unlike traditional mainstream media, social media allows politicians to get direct feedback from their electorate and to have more lively interactions with the audience. Second, communication with the electorate through social networks is cheaper than advertising in traditional media. Third, social media is a much faster way for politicians to get their message out, as it allows them to reach hundreds of thousands of potential voters in the shortest possible time.

Georgian political parties and their audience on Facebook

The DFRLab compared the number of followers of each of the selected Facebook pages and it turned out that the ruling party Georgian Dream and New Political Center — Girchi have almost equally sized audiences in the 155,000-user range. Free Georgia and Alliance of Patriots of Georgia were in the 8th and 9th places respectively in terms of followers. Georgian March and Georgian Idea do not have large Facebook audiences compared to the other parties, at approximately 5,100 and 4,500 users respectively. Overall, pro-Western parties have a much larger combined audience than right-wing, anti-West parties. The relatively smaller size of these audiences may indicate that Facebook users do not find their content compelling, or that the pages do not invest that much in social media campaigning.