Copyright
t.me/nexta_live
Nexta Live has increased these subscriber numbers this week to more than 1.5 million
White days, Belarusians do not have much information about the unrest that is filling their streets, with state-run TV making little effort to report it and other websites and social media offline.
But one source of information that has attracted increasing numbers of 9.5 million people in this country is a channel on the popular Telegram messaging app called Nexta. NEKH-ta expressed, it has managed to bypass many of the restrictions.
By Wednesday, opposition websites were online again, but it has been quiet for three nights.
How Nexta came to his audience
“We are sitting in a bunker,” is how one Belarusian described the situation.
Meanwhile, hundreds of messages are being posted to Nexta’s 1.5 million subscribers. A riot police car is seen driving in a crowd, police are filming hitting a protest on the ground, petrol bombs are being dropped – this news is visible and without sense.
The Telegram messenger has only occasionally been available via wi-fi, but its founder Pavel Durov says it has enabled “anti-censorship tools”.
Copyright
Reuters
Protests erupted hours after Alexander Lukashenko’s victory in Sunday’s presidential vote
“An Internet shutdown is a huge mistake by the authorities,” Nexta editor-in-chief Roman Protasevich told BBC Russian. “Telegram has picked up almost all Belarusians who are flooding the streets in an attempt to bring about change in the country.”
With most of the opposition leadership out of the country, the channel has played an important role in coordinating the protests. But more established opposition media are envious of such an activist source of information whose messages are difficult to verify.
Media playback is not supported on your device
Nexta has published calls for help, showing maps of where police are located, as well as addresses for Protestants to hide in, and contacts for lawyers and human rights activists.
It has also advised subscribers how to block internet from using proxies and other means.
Prior to the third night of protests, it provided detailed instructions to Protestants on how to act on the streets.
What is Nexta?
It has no website, and only a small editorial board of four in Warsaw, but it does have a YouTube and a Telegram channel, and an audience hungry for information.
The editor-in-chief says they are “pioneers of cyber-journalism”, where video and photo content is “as short, informative and illustrative as possible”.
Founded five years ago as YouTube music by teenager Stepan Putilo, also known as Stepan Svetlov, translates it from Belarusian as “someone”.
The first video was a sarcastic cover version of a song, mocking the 2015 campaign leading up to President Alexander Lukashenko’s re-election. “For 20 years there has been no choice, only a worn tire.”
Then it was about corruption, theft and drunk driving officials, promising “honest information about the reality in Belarus”.
“It was my hobby. I made funny videos for my relatives’ birthdays. Then I decided to collect all the trash from Lukashenko’s Belarus,” Mr Putilo told the Charter 97 human rights website.
Telegram channel Nexta Live appeared in 2018 and the following year a documentary about the autocratic leader of Belarus attracted almost three million views on YouTube.
“The film tells in detail about how Lukashenko stole our country, dreams, freedom, future and 25 years of life,” Stepan Putilo said.
A Belarusian court has declared the film a “extremist”.
Copyright
Getty Images
Alexander Lukashenko has ruled the former Soviet Union since 1994
But Nexta’s Telegram channel was noticed and the 2020 elections took it to a new and larger audience.
“Who needs a site in 2020 that can block any ministry of information with one click?” ask its founders. Its Telegram posts have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, more than websites like Tut.by, hit by censorship.
What does it post?
Nexta mainly takes user-generated content, and uses anonymous material from all over Belarus.
Copyright
Nexta Live
Scenes of three nights of protests and police responses were posted on Belarus’ Nexta Live channel
The platform is also secure, says Mr Protasevich, who claims that the stories they post would never be broadcast on state-run TV.
Like Stepan Putilo, he lives in Poland, where he applied for political asylum. Despite running the channel from outside Belarus, he insists that messages be checked for actual accuracy and he sees no problem in supporting the protests from Warsaw.
Within hours, her audience grew by 100,000 on election night and by then, after two nights of protests, it had gathered more than a million.
He says that although the channel mainly uses the information sent by users, he rejects criticism from such journalists in Belarus. They say mistakes have been made, and they point to the apparent ability to coordinate protests.
Hours after Nexta reported that protester Yevgeny Zaichkin had died in the early hours of Monday, he told Reuters news agency that he had survived a brutal beating by police.
Copyright
EPA
Protestants have accused riot police of brutality
Anna Kaltygina, of the opposition website Tut.by, is of the opinion that Nexta is devaluing the media work by publishing unverified information and stirring up revolution on the Telegram channel. “If you work in Poland, it is difficult to check messages coming from Belarus,” she told Echo Moscow website.
The editor-in-chief of Nexta says that what is important to him is the bloodshed on the streets. “Do I feel responsible for what we publish? Only in terms of whether it will bring people closer to victory and the end of the dictatorship.”
Who finances it?
There’s some confusion here. The channel has no ads and only the names of Stepan Putilo and Roman Protasevich are known.
Mr. Putilo has said in the past that money has come from supporters as a former university scholarship.
However, his colleague told the BBC that they only had ads and no donations.
A website of Belarusian petitioners recently requested state funding for Nexta, claiming it was much more useful than state TV.
