Establishing contact points in all election-related institutions that will be responsible for responding to election-related disinformation or incidents, and that will be available to media outlets when producing news, defining incidents, determining how they should be addressed and who should respond through an agreed inter-institutional protocol, ensuring the independence of civil society and the media, particularly fact-checkers, and securing institutional support for access to credible information. These are some of the recommendations from the Draft Policy and Accountability Roadmap, which proposes measures and activities to counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI). The recommendations were presented at the event “From Evidence to Action: Strengthening Resilience to Election-Related FIMI in North Macedonia,” organized by the Metamorphosis Foundation in cooperation with International IDEA and the Embassy of Canada.
Michelle Cameron, Ambassador of Canada to Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia, stressed that no democratic society is immune to FIMI, nor can it tackle election-related disinformation on its own and in isolation.
“We do not have the luxury of thinking that FIMI is someone else’s problem. In Canada, as in every democratic country, regardless of how large or small, it is a challenge that no country can face alone. Institutions are important in this process, but they are not enough on their own. For example, Canada has adopted new laws on FIMI, but we cannot consider this solely a government responsibility, it is also the responsibility of civil society organizations and the media. We must ensure clear communication with citizens, who should not be left feeling afraid or believing that they should trust nothing, but rather we need to earn their trust. Elections are a shared endeavor based on trust, and citizens need to believe that the results are accurate,” Cameron said.
Alberto Fernandez Gibaja, Head of the Digitalization and Democracy Program at International IDEA, noted that the shared goal of everyone confronting FIMI is to strengthen democracy, and that building resilience in North Macedonia also has an impact on every other country tackling election-related disinformation. According to him, the Metamorphosis Draft Roadmap was developed based on years of evidence and dialogue and reflects the key approaches to be taken during and after electoral processes, as well as ways to strengthen cooperation among all partners and build resilience to FIMI.
The Draft Policy and Accountability Roadmap proposes measures and activities to counter election-related disinformation that can be implemented immediately without legislative changes, as well as measures that will need to be implemented over the longer term because they require legislative amendments or broader political dialogue.
According to Goran Rizaov of the Metamorphosis Foundation, the Roadmap proposes that institutional contact points for communication in FIMI cases be appointed as soon as possible. These contact points would be responsible for responding to election-related incidents. The Roadmap also calls for a protocol to be established that would define who should verify suspicious claims and how they should be verified, determine whether an incident constitutes a cyber incident or potentially a criminal offence related to elections, establish when a response should be issued and who should address the public, and specify who should preserve evidence related to the incident and how. These are questions that should be answered before incidents occur.
“Vulnerability to FIMI is not new. The country has deep political, ideological and ethnic divisions, a fragile media market, and low levels of trust in the media and institutions. A large part of political communication takes place online, which is also where these problems occur. That is why platform accountability must also be realistic: designated points of contact need to be appointed, and there must be transparency about political advertising and who pays for it during and outside election periods. Specifically, our monitoring of the 2025 elections showed that the largest political pages, most often associated with party leaders rather than candidates, spent more than €150,000 on Meta platforms alone,” said Rizaov.
He points out that the process of amending the Electoral Code also needs to move forward in order to regulate online campaigns and information on spending for political advertising, as well as to link the Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services (AVMU) register with the State Election Commission’s (SEC) electoral advertising register. The Roadmap also proposes that, after every election, there should be an audit of the activities and incidents that occurred, how long it took institutions to respond, how platforms responded, and similar issues.
Regarding media resilience during elections, Biljana Nastеska-Kalanoska from the Association of Journalists of Macedonia raised the issue of information integrity and media independence in the context of paid political advertising during the electoral process. According to Nasteska-Kalanoska, public funding is a concern not only in terms of how funding is allocated and how much is allocated, but also in terms of its impact on editorial policies. She also emphasised the importance of adhering to professional and ethical standards in election reporting, as well as the principle of impartial reporting and fact-checking, particularly at a time when news spreads very quickly, as one of the ways to counter FIMI.
According to Pero Momirovski of the Independent Trade Union of Journalists and Media Workers (SSNM), one problem is that many media outlets in the country depend on paid political advertising during elections for their survival. An additional problem, he noted, is that the basis for receiving funding is not the quality or professionalism of a media outlet.
“Every piece of sponsored content and political advertising must be clearly identified, but during the pre-election period this is often not the practice,” said Biljana Georgievska, Executive Director of the Council of Media Ethics. She also pointed to the Code of Journalists and its recent updates concerning the influence of social media influencers and the use of artificial intelligence, stressing that election coverage must maintain a balance that is genuine, not merely superficial.
“It is not only political and party pressure that affects media resilience, which also depends heavily on economic independence,” said Zorana Gadzovska Spasovska, editor at Kolegium.mk. She added that media outlets face a shortage of the staff and time needed to verify the accuracy of information, while at the same time having to contend with institutions and politicians who have entire teams that can quickly create and share information and who, very often, communicate with each other rather than with the public.
According to Bojan Marichic, President of the State Election Commission (SEC), elections also take place in the digital space, where people receive a multitude of information and form opinions. For this reason, protection against FIMI is not limited to the ballot box, but also extends to the information space.
“There is a great need for cybersecurity and protection against FIMI, but we must ensure that this does not come at the expense of freedom of expression. The Roadmap is an excellent document, particularly for all relevant institutions that have a platform for dialogue. There are many examples from other countries of how they address FIMI, such as Sweden, where there is the Psychological Defence Agency and a dedicated organization for protecting the media space. The results are visible in the reduction of FIMI between two election cycles,” said Marichic.
The event was also attended by representatives of the Ministry of Digital Transformation, Aleksandar Osmanli, and the Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services, Sasho Bogdanovski.
