site.btaUPDATED Nearly 70% of Bulgarians Buy Into Conspiracy Theories - Poll

Close to 70% of Bulgarians buy into conspiracy theories, 36.9% believe that facts are relative and 36.9% tend to believe disinformation, according to a story by the Centre for the Study of Democracy presented at BTA Thursday. As many as 48% of Bulgarians believe it is a major problem that foreign powers are trying to influence the European elections this week.

For 33% it is a minor problem and 19% say that it is not a problem.

The poll also found that 58% of Bulgarians are ready to bear arms to protect their country if it is attacked. 42% are not.

The express poll was taken by the Centre for the Study of Democracy and the Bulgarian-Romanian Observatory for Digital Media. It included 1,071 Bulgarian respondents aged over 16 between May 25 and June 2. 

Around 80% of the respondents believe that the key challenges facing the EU are migration, inflation and high energy prices. Fewer than 45% say that among the key challenges are China’s spreading influence in the EU and declining US interest in the EU as strategic partners.

Fewer than 20% of respondents say the EU should support Ukraine militarily, 19.4% think the EU should further strengthen its sanctions against Russia, nearly 27% say the EU should put pressure on Ukraine to negotiate. About 1/3 say the EU should take a neutral stance.

According to 31.5%, it is very likely that the US government will try to influence the European elections. 25.4% say that the Kremlin is very likely to intervene.

Nearly 60% of Bulgarians fully agree that politicians often do not share the real motives for their decisions. 51.7% fully agreed that ordinary people are not aware of many important things happening in the world. Almost 70% agree that there are secret organizations that exert big influence on political decisions.

Of 92,000 articles about the eurozone collected for the purpose of this study, 1.5% contain disinformation. Of nearly 105,000 articles on the Schengen area, 35% were found to contain disinformation. On military support for Ukraine - 8% of just over 112,000 articles contained disinformation.

Goran Georgiev, senior analyst with the Centre for the Study of Democracy, and Todor Galev, the organization’s Director for Research, presented a model for countering disinformation. It relies on preventive measures aiming to strengthen the societal resilience, improve the media environment and modernizing the official institutions. Stepping up the sanctions and improving the detection of disinformation would also help, they said.