Media expert Pavliuk Bykovsky

answers these questions of

on the Svaboda Premium channel .

Briefly

• The authorities will present the results of the Vilnius conference as confirmation that the opposition was preparing an armed coup in 2020 and later.

• At the "New Belarus" conference, the opposition field was institutionalized.

• Political analysts assessed its results quite restrainedly, but other influencers were more relaxed, both positively and negatively.

• There was no radical reformatting of the opposition field, the new figure is only Sahaszczyk, and that is a relatively new one.

• The media themselves determine the agenda, determine what is important and what is not important, determine the weight and influence of certain political forces and figures.

• In democratic countries, during the elections and only at this time, public media are obliged to equally cover the activities of all the participants in the electoral competition.

- What was the media "echo" of the "New Belarus" conference - its actions and decisions, first of all - the creation of a transitional cabinet?

How much was written about her in the media, social networks, messengers?

Many pro-government Telegram channels unanimously reprinted a post from the BelVestnik channel under the title "The opposition is betting on the forceful option of a change of power in Belarus."

This material contains a direct threat to the member of the transitional cabinet, Valer Sahashchyk - "the former lieutenant colonel forgot about the iron hammer that can come to the head of those who, by tweeting threats, try to intimidate the civilian population of Belarus."

Zyanon Pazniak, the leader of the Conservative-Christian Party of the BNF, criticized the conference, noting that "in a political sense, it would be better to eliminate this group altogether."

Political commentator of STB TV channel Ryhor Azaronak reposted Pazniak's assessment, accompanied by the comment - "Eliminate!".

Pavlyuk, from these reactions of the pro-government news channels, what further information line do you expect from this side?

Pavliuk Bykovsky

- The authorities will consider the statements made at the conference as a confirmation of their theses - they say, we said that an armed coup was being prepared in Belarus, but this has finally been confirmed by those who were responsible for organizing the coup.

I think it will be said that the opposition has split.

This is a traditional set of theses that are needed to discredit the enemy.

This is all described in textbooks on military propaganda.

One must convince one's side of its strength and unity, and show the enemy as incapacitated, incapable of resistance, and divided within itself.

— Valer Karbalevich wrote that the formation of the transitional cabinet was a response to public demand.

Is society satisfied with this answer?

How does it, so to speak, respond to the answer to its request?

- There was a lot of attention to the conference, many people watched it in the live broadcast, many got involved in its work, asking questions and expressing their opinions in the broadcast chat.

All independent media wrote about her, some of them made live text broadcasts of her walk.

There were great expectations from this conference.

In my opinion, the detailed description of the details of the conference and attention to contradictions created "white noise", against the background of which it was not very visible what was happening, what was important, and what was not.

- Many people spoke about the conference, including journalists, politicians, and ordinary users of social networks.

But leaders of public opinion also spoke out, using Pelevin's ironic term, "leaders of the discourse."

Before and during the conference, Andrei Dynko, Aleksandar Klaskovsky, Artyom Shreibman spoke, for example.

And all of them showed restrained optimism, saying that there is nothing bad in the results of the conference, but we should not expect great results from them.

Maybe I didn't read them, but in your opinion, was there any common assessment of persons whose opinions are listened to?

- You named three political analysts.

But there were many statements, and not only from those who analyze politics, but also from those who make it, who participate in it.

I would like to note the statements of

, the presence of

was very bright .

Social media influencers are not exhausted by political analysts.

Analysts were indeed restrained, but influencers were generally more relaxed, both in positive and negative assessments.

People in the know knew what would happen at the conference, and for them there was no great intrigue in what happened there.

But she was in the way it would be served.

The institutionalization of the opposition field, which took place in Vilnius, is quite an important thing.

It is also important that this new configuration included a powerful factor in the person of

.

The appeal to the person of

created additional intrigue.

- You can recall the informational context of the 2020 election campaign.

Before it started, there was apathy, the opposition primaries were rather unconvincing, and the votes for the boycott were quite loud.

And suddenly - the nomination of Tsapkala, Tsikhanovskyi, Babarika.

And all the apathy, despair, boredom disappeared like a hand.

The situation in the information space, in social networks and in society as a whole has changed radically.

Now, after the Vilnius conference, something similar has arisen?

- If we talk about emigration, then it is quite possible, the attention to the conference was really great.

But it cannot be said that this can be compared with the reaction of 2020 to the arrival of such figures as

.

Now the new figure is Valer Sahashchyk, so he is a relatively new figure - he is new in this environment.

Now it became clear how Latushka will cooperate with Tikhonovskaya.

Tsikhanovskaya was a favorite of the media before and was perceived as one of the main symbols and leaders of the opposition to

So there was no radical reformation of the political field.

- One of the loudest events of the Vilnius conference was Veronika Tsapkala's speech, which you have already mentioned.

She accused the independent media of being biased, of silencing the activities of her and her husband, Valero Tsapkala, in particular.

Some laughed at her proposal to create some body to control the degree of objectivity of the mass media.

But the question is really interesting.

Why was much more written about the same conference in Vilnius than about the forums convened by Tsapkal in Warsaw and Berlin?

Why, for example, is Latushka written more than Tsapkaliv, Tikhonovskaya — more than Latushka?

Veronika clearly hinted at the fact that this situation is the result of political corruption, that the office of Tsikhanovskaya, Franziska Vyachorka, buys the media.

And what is your explanation?

— The very message that the mass media should write about everyone equally is unfounded.

The media sets the agenda, determines which events are important and which are not.

In the British BBC, which works for Great Britain, the first news there will be about ecology - about dolphins, about whales, and only then - about debates in the parliament.

This is how they define priorities, the importance of events.

It is shaped by both tradition and audience.

The media are not obliged to give a word to everyone who contacted them.

To a certain extent, the state-funded media have such an obligation.

It is necessary to distinguish between state and public media, the latter do not work under the dictates of the state at all.

Veronika Tsapkala referred to the experience of the German media.

But there, public media exist on subscription fees paid by households.

There is no perfect system, even in democratic countries there are attempts by some political forces to put pressure on the media, but this does not mean that everyone should be reported to the same extent.

The media themselves determine the hierarchy of importance, determine which of the newsmakers is more influential and who is less, and to whom to pay more or less attention.

Only during the election campaign can other norms be adopted, when all participants of the competition should be given equal attention.

In democratic countries, this rule is mandatory only during elections and only for public media.

Commercial media usually follow this rule during elections too, but of their own free will.

There is a conspiracy theory according to which Belarusian independent media are controlled from a single center.

It is difficult to explain that this is not true to those people who believe in this theory.

Conspiracy has been around for centuries, and no arguments against its supporters work.

- How does the media determine what is important and what is not important, who is influential and who is not?

In a democratic country, the political hierarchy is determined one way or another by the election results.

It is natural that the media in a democratic country pay more attention to the party that won 30% in the last election than the one that won 5%.

The last elections in Belarus were held 2 years ago.

Their results were clearly falsified.

But why even now, according to the media, Tsikhanovskaya is more important than Tsapkala?

Zenon Pazniak last participated in the elections in 1994.

But nevertheless, he is still a newsmaker, he is quoted.

Can we say that Belarusian mass media determine the hierarchy of importance of politicians arbitrarily?

— I did not vote for Tikhonovskaya in 2020.

But I admit that a lot of people voted for her then.

This gives her a certain mandate of trust.

It is also important what actions were taken by her.

All over the world, a politician is considered to be someone who is elected somewhere and who represents someone.

In Belarus, since the BPF did not get into the Supreme Council of the 13th convocation, independent media had to reckon with the fact that there is an opposition that is not represented in the parliament, but has a certain trust of society.

Both street demonstrations and the results of sociological surveys showed that there is something behind these people.

In 2020, we saw very large-scale protests, and we could appreciate the potential of those people who called for protests.

However, I would like to note that Svetlana Tsikhanovskaya said that she was proud of the protesters, but at first she did not call for protests.

And the question arose for the media: who is the organizer of the protests?

As a result, it turned out that

(aka NEXTA) is leading the protests.

There was a similar cliché in 2011 about the revolution in Egypt that it was a Twitter revolution.

A telegram revolution allegedly took place in Belarus.

I believe that this is a simplification regarding both Egypt-2011 and Belarus-2020.

And then there were attempts by various political forces to draw attention to themselves.

In some, as in Tikhonovskaya's office, they were more successful, in others - less successful.

But this is a natural process.