One headline to a candidate's talking point
The big picture: It began with a fact. On 1 Oct, donation reports showed a €100,000 donation to Gurov's committee. No donor was named. Five phases followed; they are shaded on the chart in section 3.
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1Seeding2 Oct, 24 hours · 1 headline
A regional site names the donor: a business partner of Kiril Petkov's wife. Nobody picks it up.
"100 grand from Linda's business partner for Gurov"plovdiv-online.com · 2 Oct 08:11 -
2Dormancy3 Oct-8 Oct · 0 headlines
Six days of silence. No independent outlet repeats it.
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3Coordinated amplification9 Oct-12 Oct · 17 headlines on 15 sites
The Asmara group, a documented disinformation network (AEJ-Bulgaria), posts the same headline across its sites within an hour (section 4). Aggregators carry it through the weekend. Then it stops.
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4Low-volume development13 Oct-25 Oct · 4 headlines
Low reach, key build-up. sik.bg asks whether Zelensky is paying for Gurov's campaign, then links the donor to "a company named after a Kyiv drone giant". faktibg.com spreads it. Every element of the breakout is in place before election day.
"Millions for PP-DB, €300,000 for Gurov and a company named after a Ukrainian combat-drone maker: what links Kiril Petkov to the big donors"faktibg.com · 18 Oct 09:07 -
5Breakout26 Oct-29 Oct · 47 headlines on 23 sites
The night Gurov makes the runoff, bnews.bg fuses it into one claim: "A military-drone maker in Ukraine is a sponsor of Andrey Gurov's campaign". Two days later Yotova repeats it. The claim enters the campaign and peaks.
Narrative spread and dissemination
Between the lines: The Asmara group carried the 10 Oct push. faktibg.com and sik.bg built the drone angle in mid-October. After the first round, nearly every group joined at once.
One dot per headline. Bands are the phases. Groups are explained in section 4.
Every pick-up followed a news hook
Driving the news: The claim advanced only when events gave it a hook: donation reports, Black Sea drone strikes, the first-round result, the Kaliakra ship attack. Filled markers are events followed by a pick-up.
| # | Date | What happened | First site to pick it up | Then carried by | Sites | Headlines |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 Oct | Campaign donation reports are published: a single €100,000 donation to the Gurov-Kandev committee | plovdiv-online.com · 2 Oct 08:11 | 1 | 1 | |
| 2 | 2 Oct | Radev won't suspend the Ukraine agreement signed by Gurov's government | No pick-up | |||
| 3 | 6 Oct | Drones hit commercial ships off Bulgaria; Gurov: "Now it's drones. What if tomorrow it's missiles?" | No pick-up | |||
| 4 | 9 Oct | Yotova declines a debate; Gurov presses her on drones | globusnews.net · 9 Oct 22:40 | informiran.net, razkritia.com, svobodnoslovo.eu +9 more | 13 | 15 |
| 5 | 13 Oct | New drone strikes in the Black Sea; the opposition calls the government's and Yotova's response weak | sik.bg · 14 Oct 10:33 | 1 | 1 | |
| 6 | 17 Oct | New drone attacks in the Black Sea; Yotova says there is no threat to Bulgaria | sik.bg · 17 Oct 12:00 | faktibg.com | 2 | 2 |
| 7 | 26 Oct | First-round results: Gurov reaches the runoff against Yotova | bnews.bg · 26 Oct 19:46 | globusnews.net, big5.bg, mediamall.info +4 more | 8 | 8 |
| 8 | 28 Oct | Yotova repeats the claim in the runoff campaign | glasove.com · 28 Oct 08:34 | big5.bg, zemya.bg, bnews.bg +5 more | 9 | 11 |
| 9 | 28 Oct | CONTSHIP JET container ship hit by drones off Kaliakra. About 2.5 hours later a YouTube comment calls it a "pre-election provocation by the Ukrainian drone maker, sponsor of Gurov and Kandev" | mediamall.info · 28 Oct 12:23 | duma.bg, budnaera.com, plovdiv-press.bg +16 more | 20 | 28 |
The same text, at the same second, on linked sites
10 Oct: one headline, one hour
"Linda Petkova's business partner is Andrey Gurov's largest donor" ran site after site within an hour, four sites at exactly 11:50:00. Bylines repeat: "Ivanina Nikolova" on kliuki.bg and razkritia.com; "Iva Ivanova" on svobodnoslovo.eu and mreja.bg.
The network behind it
How to read it: each circle is a site, sized by its claim headlines; a line means both ran the same headline. The takeaway: two aggregators sit at the centre, stitching the Asmara drop, bnews.bg, narod.bg and the 28 Oct wave into one web. The drone-angle seeders stand apart: nobody copied them word for word.
Same headline means identical opening words, ignoring site names and punctuation. Hover a circle for details.
Social posts examples
The MediaMall version ("Kiril Petkov started working at a company with the same name as a powerful Ukrainian drone maker") hit 10 channels and chats in 43 minutes, 29 hours after websites ran it. Same accounts, several chats, minutes apart.
Martin Karbovski's page: "His main sponsor today is a man who makes drones." Posted four hours after Yotova, half an hour after Kaliakra. 638 likes, 80 shares, estimated reach 16,580: the most-engaged single item in our data.
5 near-identical comments under 5 videos: Gurov "signed a ten-year agreement with … Zelensky" and "will send Bulgarian troops to fight against Russia". Factcheck.bg debunked that claim on 21 Oct.
5 of 12 evening comments under one video repeat it, for example "The main sponsor of his campaign is a Ukrainian drone company. This man threatens Bulgaria's national security." One user posted it twice in 11 minutes.