Ethical Concerns and Politicization of Digital Transformation in Bulgaria

The rapid digital transformation and innovations have raised multiple ethical and political concerns, while regulation is difficult to achieve. This chapter focusing on Bulgaria aims to explore cases of politicization of different aspects of digital transformation on behalf of parties, or political actors mobilized on issues related to ethics, transparency, and malpractices on social media, such as political bots, misinformation, or lack of transparency upon content moderation. The time frame of the study from 2020 to 2024 encompasses the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian war against Ukraine. These unprecedented crises and events have increased the role of digital media for communication and public opinion shaping. Also, since 2020 Bulgaria has been in political crisis with growing party system’s fragmentation, accompanied by radicalization on social media. Selected cases studied include first a party in government trying to introduce measures against the fake news. The second case represents both civic and political mobilization on the moderation of content on Facebook in Bulgaria. The third case concerns governmental parties’ attempt to regulate online misinformation. On the basis of the cases studied, one can affirm that attempts to regulate social media on behalf of political actors raise ethical and political concerns about the freedom of speech and the risks of censorship. Also, regulation of online communication flows on behalf of a single nation-state is a difficult, even impossible task. However, progress achieved at the EU level with the Digital Services Act and the regulation of AI helps domestic political actors in their efforts of regulation.