Mapping Fake News and Disinformation in the Western Balkans (EXPO_STU(2020)653621)

Commissioned by the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee (AFET), this study maps 74 confirmed disinformation campaigns in the Western Balkans between 2018 and 2020, identifying Russia, China, and Turkey as the primary external actors alongside significant domestic disinformation dynamics. The Western Balkans represents a particularly important information battleground: the region's EU accession aspirations, its unresolved ethnic and political tensions, and its weaker media ecosystems make it a primary target for external information manipulation.

The study's analytical contribution is its granularity. Rather than treating the Western Balkans as a single information environment, the authors disaggregate by country, by actor, and by narrative theme — producing an evidence base that is directly useful for practitioners working in the region. The domestic dimension is particularly well-handled: disinformation in the Western Balkans is not simply a story of external interference but of how external actors exploit and amplify pre-existing domestic political divisions. For anyone working on EU enlargement, regional resilience-building, or Balkans-specific FIMI assessment, this remains the most comprehensive open-source mapping available.