On social media in Bulgaria, the outcome of the upcoming elections already looks decided.
Content linked to former president Rumen Radev dominates Facebook and TikTok, far outpacing all other political actors. In both volume and engagement, content supporting Radev and his new political project is already ahead even before the campaign has formally begun.
The scale and speed of this growth raise a critical question: how much of this visibility reflects genuine public support, and how much is driven by coordinated amplification and inauthentic behavior?
The first in a series of election monitoring reports by BFMI, developed in partnership with Sensika, tracks algorithmic manipulation in real time ahead of the parliamentary elections on April 19, 2026.
The analysis shows how coordinated online activity across Facebook and TikTok is already influencing visibility, reach, and perceived public sentiment. It covers the period up to March 17, just over a month before the vote.
This builds on earlier TikTokcracy research and reflects a shift in how political visibility is formed online. What we are seeing is not a potential risk, but an active and evolving part of the current electoral landscape.
Uncertainty, fear, and polarization
Bulgaria enters its eighth parliamentary election in five years in an environment that favors manipulative political communication.
Anti-corruption protests in 2025 brought down a government but did not resolve underlying public dissatisfaction. The country’s transition to the euro in early 2026 has added economic uncertainty, leaving voters more exposed to emotionally charged messaging.
Years of short-lived governments have further weakened trust in institutions and reduced the ability of political actors to compete in an environment increasingly shaped by algorithmic distribution.
In this context, content driven by fear and division performs well. The war in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East provide a constant stream of polarizing material, which platforms tend to amplify.
This is not an isolated case, but part of a broader European pattern of elections increasingly exposed to digital manipulation.
Organic growth or coordinated amplification
The scale of unofficial networks and the speed of their growth raise a fundamental question: to what extent does this visibility reflect genuine public support, and to what extent is it the result of coordinated amplification?
The report documents networks built on repurposed pages and groups, coordinated posting, and platform-specific amplification tactics. These structures make it difficult to distinguish real public momentum from artificially generated visibility.
Publicly available data does not allow direct attribution of these networks, but it clearly shows which political actors benefit most from their activity.
What the data shows
Monitoring data across Facebook and TikTok shows a clear imbalance in online visibility across political actors. Content associated with former president Rumen Radev dominates both platforms, with reach and growth rates that significantly exceed competing political forces.
The scale of the platforms is also critical. By the end of 2025, Facebook reached around 65% of Bulgaria’s adult population, while TikTok had 2.63 million adult users (47.6% of the population) and remains the fastest-growing platform in the country.
On TikTok, the hashtag #rumenradev has accumulated over 90 million views across thousands of videos, growing at a rate several times higher than comparable political hashtags.
On Facebook, large networks of groups and pages show rapid membership growth, high posting frequency, and sustained engagement. Analysis of the 30 largest pro-Radev groups shows over 1.3 million memberships, equivalent to approximately 400,000 to 600,000 unique users.
At this scale, the question is no longer only who has the stronger message, but who has the stronger distribution infrastructure.
Manipulation tactics
The findings point to the need for a more structured response to coordinated online manipulation, The analysis identifies three recurring tactics used to extend reach artificially.
The first is the repurposing and acquisition of existing social media pages to generate initial engagement and trigger algorithmic distribution. In one documented case, a page previously used for second-hand car parts was renamed to support Radev’s political positioning.
The second is coordinated and inauthentic behavior across networks, including synchronized posting and repeated messaging patterns. Clusters of accounts manage multiple pages and groups simultaneously, while patterns such as high views, low engagement, repeated slogans, and sudden traffic spikes point to systematic amplification rather than organic growth.
The third is the hijacking of political hashtags to suppress competing narratives and redirect visibility. In the case of PP–DB, their main TikTok hashtag was flooded with hostile and unrelated content, leading the coalition to abandon it and lose organic reach among undecided voters.
These tactics reinforce each other across platforms and over time, forming a structured system of amplification. The result is a blurred boundary between organic engagement and coordinated activity.
Recommendations
The findings point to the need for a more structured response to coordinated online manipulation, particularly in the context of elections.
- Strengthening institutional capacity for real-time monitoring
- Increasing transparency around content amplification and platform-driven visibility
- Expanding collaboration between institutions, researchers, and independent observers
- Raising public awareness of how algorithmic distribution shapes political visibility
The most significant risk is not limited to election day. The longer-term impact is a political environment in which manufactured consensus and genuine public sentiment become increasingly difficult to distinguish.
