The following media were selected for analysis:
- Belarusian Telegraph Agency (BelTA)
- ATN: News of Belarus and the World
- CTVBY
- ONT TV Channel
- First National Channel of Belarusian Radio
- SB TV
Let’s consider their presence on YouTube, which is the main source of news and information among the Belarusian internet audience, according to the media research “Media Consumption of the Belarusian Internet Audience in the Country and Abroad, October’2022”.
YouTube Quantitative indicators of channels from February 25, 2022, to February 24, 2023:
- 871 videos were posted on the Belarusian Telegraph Agency (BelTA) channel.
- 1498 videos were posted on the ATN: News of Belarus and the World channel.
- 1190 videos were posted on the ONT TV Channel channel.
- 462 videos were posted on the First National Channel of Belarusian Radio channel.
- 1991 videos were posted on the SB TV channel.
- 398 videos were posted on the CTVBY channel.
According to the social media monitoring platform BuzzSumo, a massive amount of information was uploaded to the state YouTube channels – 5,220 posts! Let’s see which five videos on each channel gathered the most views:
Belarusian Telegraph Agency (BelTA)
Leader: A. Lukashenko’s February 2022 speech gathered nearly 12 million views. Four of the top five view-gathering videos feature him, and all five are related to the Russian military aggression and Belarus’s position as a co-aggressor.
ATN: News of Belarus and the World
Here in the leaders, we see disinformation narratives coming from the Russian Federation media. The channel is also a leader in the number of videos posted.
Popular here are Russian “experts” and A. Lukashenko’s speeches, demonstrating his aggressive and rude style of communication with his subordinates and managers dependent on government subsidies.
First National Channel of Belarusian Radio
The absolute leader of all six channels is a short YouTube video, fulfilling the tasks of Russian propaganda, against the backdrop of the horrific war crimes of Russian soldiers in Ukraine. And Lukashenko’s threats about retaliatory military strikes.
SB TV
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The absolute leaders in views on this channel are misleading information about the military situation in Ukraine and Belarusian propaganda on behalf of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Belarus.
The channel leads in the number of videos posted in the past year of direct military actions of the Russian Federation on the territory of a neighboring, independent state.
CTVBY
Leaders: disinformation about the purpose of Lithuanian citizens’ trip to Belarus, three speeches by Lukashenko, and one rescue of earthquake victims in Turkey.
In the “Voice of America” investigation titled: “Colorful Tape: How Does Russian Propaganda Get into Google News Feeds?” there was the following quote about the Belarusian state YouTube channel CTV:
“Google recommendations also revealed other interesting patterns – for example, a video from the Belarusian pro-government channel CTV, prioritized in the Google news feed for a user in Moscow (‘Now the army takes people with these diseases!’), garnered millions of views on YouTubе. This is significantly more than other videos of this media published over the same period. Other videos of this YouTube channel are anti-Ukrainian propaganda and news stories popularizing Alexander Lukashenko.”
The main point of the publication was: “Google’s news feed on Russian smartphones is likely capable of directing many users to sites that spread disinformation about Russia’s war with Ukraine. News aggregators operating in Russia are an important tool for searching for content about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
Basic socio-demographic characteristics of the studied state YouTube channels:
The table above shows that the majority of subscribers of the studied channels are from the Russian Federation. All six channels are seeing an increase in subscribers. All channels have predominantly male subscriber audiences.
This material shows that the most popular in terms of views, posts on YouTube channels of Belarusian state media spread misleading information (disinformation), express the opinion of the current regime’s leader, not the Belarusian people, particularly on Belarusians’ attitude towards the war in Ukraine.
Previous publication: “Content of Belarusian YouTube channels, controlled by the state, for the fifth month of the war in Ukraine”
Publication prepared by Baltic Internet Policy Initiative.
