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After the dismissal of the head of Yerevan St Grigor Lusavorich Medical Center Ara Minasyan, a huge wave of disinformation spread in the media and the Internet against Health Minister Arsen Torosyan.
“Classic” disinformation
First, it was written that Torosyan was an atheist, and then the Minister was labelled a defender of drug addicts.
When referring to the papilloma virus vaccine, some words were attributed to the Minister, which he had never said. Afterwards political.am website spread disinformation that allegedly Torosyan said that the death of 360 children a year is a normal phenomenon.
All this has been largely shared through news outlets related to Ara Minasyan’s son, Michael Minasyan. Most of the disinformation about Torosyan was spread by “Iravunk” newspaper, “Armenia” TV and politik.am.
Then, disinformation spread also about Arsen Torosyan’s release from military service.
It was written that Torosyan was released from the army service because of mental problems. This news was widely spread throughout the entire Armenian virtual domain via fake Facebook users.
On this regard, Torosyan made a press conference and said that he served at the General Staff of Artsakh, and was on combat duty during the April war.
The Minister also published a medical certificate, according to which 10 months after being called up for service he was discharged because of a kidney disease and showed the medication that he has to take every day.
It was also revealed that news.am website spread disinformation about Torosyan’s father and even spent money on advertising the article in the Internet.
Fake Accounts
The media campaign against the Health Minister continued on Facebook with the involvement of a large number of fake Facebook accounts.
Fact-Checking Platform revealed 300 fake accounts on Facebook, which have been exclusively engaged in the campaign against Arsen Torosyan. Everything started after the Minister dismissed Mikael Minasyan’s father Ara Minasyan from the post of the head of the St. Grigor Lusavorich Medical Center and accused him of corruption.
These fake accounts look quite real since they use photos of real people. Those photos belong to people who have no idea that their personal information is being used in Armenia. As a rule, most of the real owners of the photos live in Georgia.
When looking at the activity of these fake accounts for the last two months, we can see that the latter were exclusively busy with castigating Torosyan as well as collecting more views for the above-mentioned websites. These users commented only on the articles criticizing Torosyan.
For example, photos of a Facebook user who goes by the name Anahit Baghdasaryan, belong to 24-year-old Kristina Khoshtaria, a Moscow resident.
It is noteworthy that this group of fakes mostly uses photos of seductive girls, probably for attracting more views and interest. One of such users is Lilit Hambardzumyan.
The user of this account uses the photos of a Ukrainian resident Nino Sukhulia, however regularly publishes political posts and publications.
There was even a fake Facebook users acting against Arsen Torosyan that has been presenting as a married couple. The latter even post photos of a child trying to show what a happy couple they are. In reality, however, these photos are taken from the account of a couple residing in Georgia and are used to cover up a political propaganda.
More details on fake accounts will be available in the near future.
In order for the disinformers not to replace the already discovered fake accounts, the Union of Informed Citizens will not publish the whole list of the 300 fake accounts. However for the proof of their actual volumes, we will present the list of fake accounts with surnames starting with “M” (they can be found here).
Rafayel Afrikyan
