Bulgaria: Anti-European Propaganda Online Declined in 2025 but Became More Directly Targeted at the EU
Published Thursday 1 October 2026 at 15:38
Propaganda and disinformation activity targeting the European Union in Bulgarian online media declined significantly in 2025, but the messaging became more explicitly anti-European, with the EU increasingly portrayed as a direct adversary of Russia. These are among the findings of a new report, “Propaganda and Disinformation in Bulgarian Online Media Against the European Union and European Institutions (1 January–31 December 2025)”, published by the Foundation for Humanities and Social Research – Sofia.
According to data from the SENSIKA media monitoring system, 61,026 publications related to the monitored propaganda and disinformation narratives were identified in Bulgarian-language online media in 2025. This compares with 190,193 publications in 2024, representing a decline of approximately two-thirds. The authors attribute the decrease primarily to the shutdown of the so-called “mushroom website” network in November 2024 and note that the level of activity has returned roughly to that recorded in 2021.
Despite the quantitative decline, the study identifies a shift in focus. While migration was among the leading themes in 2024, the broader negative portrayal of Europe moved to the forefront in 2025. The only sub-narrative for which the researchers recorded an increase was that of the “collective West”, in which the EU is increasingly portrayed as a direct enemy of Russia.
The authors also identify a change in the way the EU is portrayed in pro-Russian propaganda narratives. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Union was frequently depicted as weak and dependent on the United States. After 2022, the EU and the US were increasingly grouped together under the label of the “collective West”. In 2025, following Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Europe increasingly became a target of negative messaging in its own right.
Networks of Automated Dissemination
A separate section of the report examines how content spreads between different websites. In a sample of 3,776 publications, 1,552 had duplicate headlines, accounting for 41.1% of the dataset. Each original article generated an average of three republications.
The report identifies pogled.info, capitalbg.info, alfarss.net, bulgaria.news-pravda.com and epicenter.bg as the five leading primary sources in the analysed dataset. The largest number of republications in the sample originated from pogled.info: 157 headlines generated 202 republications.
Researchers also identified groups of websites publishing identical content almost simultaneously. In some of the cases examined, articles appeared at exactly the same hour, minute and even second, which the authors describe as an indication of inauthentic or automated behaviour.
The Euro Becomes a Major Theme
The report devotes particular attention to the campaign against Bulgaria’s accession to the euro area. According to the authors, the euro became one of the issues around which anti-European messaging was concentrated in 2025.
The study finds that the debate over retaining the Bulgarian lev provided fertile ground for a range of overlapping propaganda techniques, including disinformation, false news, fear-based messaging and the reuse of established anti-European narratives.
In its monitoring of media coverage of the euro area, the study found that 47.49% of the content came from outlets classified as “other media”, while outlets classified as “leading media” accounted for 18.26%.
The researchers caution, however, that these figures do not in themselves demonstrate that outlets in the first category disseminate disinformation. They explicitly state that additional research would be necessary to establish such a conclusion.
Propaganda Declines, Dissemination Networks Remain
The report presents an apparently contradictory picture: the overall volume of identified propaganda content has fallen sharply, while networks capable of rapidly—and in some cases probably automatically—disseminating the same messages remain active.
Persistent narratives include portrayals of EU policies as a threat to national sovereignty; claims of Europe’s economic and moral “decline”; assertions that sanctions against Russia harm European countries rather than the Russian Federation; and narratives related to migration and the alleged “replacement” of Europe’s population.
The study covers Bulgarian-language online media and blogs archived by SENSIKA and does not include social media. The authors also highlight an important methodological limitation: some of the publications identified by the monitoring system do not promote the relevant narratives themselves but quote them, including in order to challenge or debunk them. The number of identified publications therefore should not automatically be interpreted as the number of articles endorsing propaganda claims.
The report was prepared by a team from the Foundation for Humanities and Social Research – Sofia and covers the period from 1 January to 31 December 2025.
