Electronic Propaganda of Ideological-Political Platforms in Modern Georgia (Ideological Profile of Internet Editions of Georgian National-Patriotic Direction)

Abstract

The research studies four internet editions of Georgian national-patriotic direction existing in Georgia as well as those organizations, which keep in touch with society only through social pages.

The research topic is on the radar screen because national-patriotic movements have recently become active. They use the internet and social websites to promote their own ideas.

National-patriotic movements (as they called themselves) have been active since 2012, who often hold different meetings, marches, strikes, demonstrations and today they already represent one of the main parts of civil life. There are a great number of people who visit their official sites and subscribe to their Facebook pages. We often see them in various TV shows, including political ones, where they express their views openly. They were often the main topic and a matter of dispute of the news, especially since 2017 when the “Georgian March” was created. Activities of members of national-patriotic organizations are assessed differently. They are often criticized by other civil society representatives and are blamed for discrimination, infringing on others’ rights, subjecting verbal and physical abuse.

National-patriotic organizations and their supporters are really famous for their radical activities and aggression. They share their belief, views, ideology with society from their own organization websites, official Facebook pages (It is worth mentioning that they often create fake accounts). The fact that they can plan a meeting of several thousand people in a short time through the internet edition or a Facebook page was proved by many aggressive meetings of “Georgian March”. By studying the internet editions of national-patriotic direction we can demonstrate the ideological-political platform of each of them and make their classification. It leads us to get a general picture of activities of Georgian national-patriotic movements, ideology, initiatives. And once more we can compare different internet editions of Georgian national- patriotic direction and clearly see similarities and differences between them.

The more popular these organizations and their leaders become, the more necessary it gets to study and analyse their work, activities, websites and Facebook pages. This is one of the main subjects of our research. The research shows, how the ideology of representatives of national-patriotic organizations is given in the internet editions and how it gets to society. Do these organizations have any influence on the public and generally are they really national-patriotic organizations?

The list of four studied internet editions of national-patriotic movements is the following: “The Royal of Georgia” - Georoyal.ge, “Georgian Idea” - qartuliidea.ge, “Kardhu” - kardhu.wordpress.com, “National Alliance of Georgia” - geonsm.wordpress.com. Apart from these four movements, we would like to categorize separately the national-patriotic organization, which does not have an own website, being active only on social networks and is famous for its radical activities.

Today this category is the most popular one in Georgia. It must be noted that this movement is not busy with academic work and it is in strong conflict with other groups of society. A good example of this category poses the “Georgian March”.

Despite this conditional classification, those national-patriotic movements, which were studied, are more active on social networks, than in internet editions. The reason may be caused by the fact, that it is easy to interact on social networks and also, you can mobilize a great number of people through Facebook.

In addition to this, we have come to an interesting conclusion, that the majority of national-patriotic movements use their internet editions in order to reach a specific goal – to spread and strengthen an anti-western attitude in Georgia.