"Лапша на ушах". Фото из интернетов.
The FactCheck.LT project analyzed publications by Belarusian media in 2025 and concluded that state-owned outlets systematically construct an alternative reality.
The study covers Belarusian media publications from 2025, divided into two groups in the dataset: more than 72,000 publications from independent media and 77,000 from media with state ownership. In total, around 40,000 quotations and 450,000 mentions were extracted from 150,000 processed documents.
An analysis of citations reveals not merely editorial preferences, but the systematic construction of alternative realities. Readers of state media live in a world where the Belarusian opposition does not exist, Donald Trump says nothing of significance, Lithuania remains silent, and the main allies are Hungary and a circle of pro-Russian experts, the researchers say.
Readers of independent media are presented with a picture in which Ukrainian military personnel and politicians are significant actors, Belarus’s democratic forces retain a voice, and Western leaders from Lithuania to the United States shape the broader context, they note.
“These two information spaces intersect only at an inevitable point — the figures of Alyaksandr Lukashenka, Vladimir Putin, and senior Russian officials. Everything else exists in parallel universes,” the authors of FactCheck.LT believe.