“Gavrilov’s Night”: Multiple Facebook Pages Target Protests in Georgia
For the people of Tbilisi, Georgia, June 20, 2019, will go down in history as “Gavrilov’s Night.”

Sergei Gavrilov, a member of the Russian Parliament closely associated with the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church, paid a visit to the Georgian Parliament. While there, he addressed Georgian lawmakers from the speaker’s chair, which many Georgians saw as an affront to the nation’s sovereignty and triggered days of protest in Tbilisi. Many citizens saw the move to allow him to speak as implied support from the Georgian Parliament for his message.

As protesters flooded the streets, the government responded with a violent crackdown, using tear gas and rubber bullets against the thousands of people assembled. In response to the crackdown, the demonstrators demanded the resignation of Giorgi Gakharia, the country’s interior minister.

The event was set against the backdrop of conflict between Georgia and Russia. In August 2008, the two countries fought a five-day war over Georgia’s two breakaway regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. To this day, the Russian military illegally occupies 20 percent of Georgia’s territory. The Kremlin recognizes Abkhazia and South Ossetia as sovereign states, and Gavrilov himself has publicly echoed the Kremlin’s position.

Social media plays an important role in Georgian political and social life, and the number of protests organized via Facebook, including the Gavrilov protest, demonstrate that importance. On social media, a number of Georgian pages spread photos, videos, and statistics aimed at discrediting the protests and its participants.

The DFRLab examined one such Facebook page, “მახსოვს/Makhsovs” (translated from Georgian: “I Remember”). The page name was likely a reference to the prior Georgian government’s rule from 2003–2012, which the current ruling party refers to as the “bloody nine years.”

The DFRLab identified 15 additional pages spreading the same narratives to those propagated by I Remember. Similarities in content and posting pattern across these pages indicated coordinated partisan messaging operation, but one that was most likely not inauthentic.

The “I Remember” Facebook Page

I Remember was created in 2018, as were the other pages the DFRLab studied. At the time of analysis, the page had garnered over 27,000 followers and over 24,000 likes.
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['Russia', 'Georgia', 'Facebook', 'Government', 'Social Media']