Social media and online media in general is a leading platform of communication used in the ongoing campaign and authorities should pay increased attention to them, at least as much as broadcasters and the print press get under the existing legislation. This is recommended by the Youth Development for Innovation Foundation in a monitoring report focusing on online campaign activities.

Livia Țurcanu, co-author of the report, told a press conference that the biggest online ad spenders as officially reported are the Democratic Party, the Shor Party, the electoral bloc NOW, and the Socialist Party. Of the candidates running in single-member constituencies the biggest spenders are all from the United States & Canada constituency – Roman Palancica, Alexandrin Patron and Viorel Savva.

Often the parties report only the amounts spent on the national constituency, and promotion expenses are almost never broken down to reveal details like which material and where it was published.

Facebook is the platform that attracted most national constituency ad money. The most active users of sponsored posts are Our Party, the Democracy at Home Party, and Shor Party. The sponsored posts with most reactions are those of the Democratic Party, Shor Party and NOW.

Odnoklassniki is the second most popular platform, with the Socialists and Our Party being the most active. On Youtube,  the leaders are the Democrats, followed by the Socialists, and Antimafie Movement. On Instragram, the Democrats are the only present.

Mihai Mogîldea, another co-author, said that 126 of the 200 monitored single-member constituency candidates are present on at least one social media platform. More than half are present on Facebook, followed by Odnoklassniki, Instragram and Youtube. Only two have a site or a blog. Mainly candidates from Chisinau and Balti target online audiences.

On Facebook, the NOW candidates have the biggest number of followers combined, followed by the Shor Party candidates and the Democratic candidates. The Our Party candidates are the most freqent posters, followed by NOW and the Socialists. The most reacted to posts are that of NOW candidates, followed by Shor Party and Democratic candidates. On Odnoklassniki, the leaders are NOW, the Democrats and Our Party. On Youtube, the activity of single-member constituency candidates is reduced.

The report has been compiled under the “Monitoring online electoral activity” with the support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.