PROMPT ResearchThe job of spreading anti-LGBTQ+ narratives

The posts were warning against the so-called ‘LGBTQ+ ideology’, accused the West of cultural colonialism, stated the LGBT community is violent and a threat to children, accused Ukraine of Nazism and defended Russian actions.

The largest cluster, with more than half of the posts, shares the following predefined narrative in the PROMPT model: Gender and LGBTQ+ ideologies have a corrupting influence on morally pure societies. The ‘natural family structure' and 'natural order' need to be protected.

This is the anti-LGBTQ+ narrative used by three Romanian political candidates in posts labelled as electoral content.

One community with coordinated behavior was identified by PROMPT. It contains three Facebook pages: aparatorul, doar.ortodoxia, and DreaptaCREDlNTA, promoting the content of a ‘Christian-Orthodox alternative portal’ from the Republic of Moldova. These pages are targeting Romanian audiences.

An analysis of 14,987 posts containing words or expressions referring to sexual minorities shows that high percentages of anti-LGBTQ+ posts found by the PROMPT model were during the electoral months of November 2024 and May 2025 and the months following elections (December 2024 and June 2025).

The lowest percentage of posts containing anti-LGBTQ+ narratives was during the summer holiday (August 2025).

Many posts share extremely violent language, sometimes used to harass public figures. These posts usually belong to fake identities and were not taken down by the platforms even if they do not follow platforms rules and they are, in some cases, more than one year old.

 

Between the first round of elections for the Romanian presidency, in November 2024, and the re-run of presidential elections, in May 2025, associations representing sexual minorities warned repeatedly about a rise in violent online attacks against the LGBTQ+ community, in public and private messages.

For example, MozaiQ, an association defending the LGBT rights, said it filed a criminal complaint, in November 2024, following several online messages inciting people to destroy the association’s headquarters.

These messages included the address of MosaiQ. Another association, ACCEPT, said it filed another criminal complaint following a TikTok video suggesting physical violence is the response to LGBTQ+ people talking about their rights.

ACCEPT also filed complaints with the National Audiovisual Council and the National Council for Combating Discrimination against a political candidate, for LGBTQ-phobic remarks, and against another political candidate, for hate speech.

The LGBTQ+ community is a recurrent subject during electoral periods in Romania, but in 2024, after extreme-right candidate Călin Georgescu won the first round of the presidential election, the level of online violence increased markedly.

This polarising discourse was supported by three far-right parties, AUR, POT and SOS, and their leaders, through political declarations and memes, a report of the Foundation Friedrich Ebert Romania and the journalists from Panorama remarked.

The team of the PROMPT project used an artificial intelligence (AI) based model to follow the discussions about sexual minorities on five social media platforms, between November 2024 and December 2025. The aim was to identify the main toxic narratives against the LGBTQ+ people, in Romanian, after the November 2024 presidential election, and to see who is involved in spreading these narratives on social media.

Between 17 November 2024 and December 2025 the project collected 14,987 from Bluesky, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube, using words and expressions in Romanian linked to the LGBTQ+, such as LGBT, gay, homosexuali, propaganda LGBT, ideologia de gen or familia traditionala. Out of these almost 15,000 posts, the PROMPT AI-based model classified 4,473 posts (30%) into 26 predetermined narrative clusters.

The posts were warning against the so-called ‘LGBTQ+ ideology’, accused the West of cultural colonialism, stated the LGBT community is violent and a threat to children, accused Ukraine of Nazism and defended Russian actions.

Defenders of a pure Romania 

The largest narrative cluster identified by the PROMPT model, with more than half of the posts, is Gender and LGBTQ+ ideologies have a corrupting influence on morally pure societies. The ‘natural family structure' and 'natural order' need to be protected.

Out of almost 4,500 potentially toxic posts, the model classified in this narrative cluster 2,239 items. Many of these items ask for the protection of a pure nation, in the context of Presidential and Parliamentary elections:

• ‘If they still vote for the old ones, that’s it. Nothing will change anymore. Lasconi [the Presidential counter-candidate of the far-right Georgescu, in December 2024] is not a solution. She’ll shove LGBT down your throat and vaccinate you with both hands, as Ursula says, and USR [Lasconi’s party] won’t pass the [electoral] threshold.’ (item 16293; automatic AI translation from Romanian)
• ‘...in Romanian, it would mean that woke content is getting more expensive!...what comes with it as a package?more blasphemy,more LGBT "faggotry,”more propaganda...enjoy’ (item 17095; automatic AI translation from Romanian)
• ‘If it’s not his mom, it’s his dad. Man, you’re really a bunch of idiots. What do you want to have? A bum like Nicușor Dan or Crin? Or that one who supports the gay community? Who, you sickos?’ (item 17822; automatic AI translation from Romanian)

The cluster includes the posts of three political candidates who used anti-LGBTQ+ narratives in electoral messages.

These candidates use the CMF number, the unique identification code of the financial representative registered with the Permanent Electoral Authority, compulsory for electoral messages during the official campaign period. The candidates are Virgiliu-George Vlăescu (aka Virgiliu Gheorghe), a Parliamentary candidate of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), on TikTok; Mihai Lasca, a candidate in the by-elections for the Bucharest City Hall from the Party of the Romanian People Patriots, on X; and Viorica Dăncilă, a former prime-minister and a Parliamentary candidate of the National Conservative Romanian Party, on YouTube.

In the TikTok post classified by PROMPT as belonging to this pure nation narrative, Virgiliu Vlăescu sustained that ‘The legalization of homosexual marriages causes major harm to family life’ (Item 27964; automatic AI translation from Romanian).

His TikTok page dedicated to the Parliamentary election in November 2024 has several posts with religious references and warnings that same-sex marriages are inevitable, because of the European Court of Human Rights ruling, but AUR is the only party that can postpone the date, if elected in Parliament.

Screencapture of the TikTok page of the far-right candidate Virgiliu Vlăescu for Parliament (https://www.tiktok.com/@virgiliu.gheorghe), with visual references to the Orthodox faith, to electoral gatherings and to electoral debates.

Mihai Lasca marketed himself, in November 2025, as the first candidate for Bucharest who would forbid the LGBT parades, ‘which mock the traditional family and attack the Christian fiber of the Romanian people!’ (item 20253; automatic AI translation from Romanian). The AI-powered rhetorical analysis indicates that: 

• ‘the text uses hyperbole with phrases like 'the banning of LGBT parades, which mock the traditional family and attack the Christian fiber of the Romanian people!' to exaggerate the perceived threat of these parades. The climax is achieved by listing a series of negative consequences (mocking the traditional family, attacking the Christian fiber) in a single phrase’.

On YouTube, Viorica Dăncilă sustained that:

• ‘The Romanian National Conservative Party supports the natural family and Christian values! I believe in God and I support the natural family, made up of a man and a woman. At the same time, I respect all minorities! The referendum for the family was not an attempt to limit the rights of certain minorities, but rather a reflection on the moral values in today’s society.’ (Item 26830; automatic AI translation from Romanian).

The AI-powered rhetorical analysis indicates that Dăncilă used repetition to clearly indicate the positioning of her party against the LGBTQ+ people, even if it also said they do respect all minorities: ‘The text uses the phrase 'natural family' twice, which is a hyperbolic statement to emphasize support for traditional family values. Additionally, the repeated sentence 'The Romanian National Conservative Party supports the natural family and Christian values!' serves as repetition to reinforce the party's stance on these issues.’

Other predetermined narratives have smaller clusters, and include:

• Political and cultural elites are infiltrated and corrupted by LGBTQ+ ideology, or are themselves closet LGBTQ+, and therefore morally corrupt and illegitimate - 626 items;
• The West is using LGBTQ+ rights and inclusion as a tool of cultural colonialism, trying to force its corrupt values onto the rest of the world - 568 items;
• The LGBTQ+ community is violent, dangerous and/or is a threat to child safety - 414 items;
• Russia is defending itself against perceived cultural or ideological threats to traditional values or Russian identity (Russophobia) - 136 items;
• An imagined ‘gender ideology’ is dominating Western liberal democracies (Gayropa) - 120 items. 

The manifested interest in protecting children is present in posts from several narrative clusters. The word copil/ copii (child/children) appears in 586 items, of which 66 percent are classified by the PROMPT AI-based model in the first narrative cluster of a pure nation and of natural family, and 16 percent in the narrative cluster that considers the LGBTQ+ community a threat to child safety. More than 170 posts incorrectly associate LGBT people with pedophilia and are classified mainly under the danger-centered narrative (89 items) and under the pure nation narrative (59 items).

The Moldovian influence   

Out of 14,987 posts gathered from November 2024 until December 2025 from Bluesky, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube, using LGBTQ+ related words and expressions, the PROMPT team identified only one community, with coordinated behavior, between three pages in Romanian on Facebook. We remarked during our research focused on Romanian and Moldovan elections that the only platform that allows coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) is Telegram.

The other platforms, present inside the European Union, delete communities of pages and accounts that use automatisation to publish similar content in a coordinated manner. We also remarked that pages belonging to institutions such as embassies, consulates and newsrooms, alongside private accounts may be allowed to share similar content over a very short time spam (seconds) if the community is very limited (for example, two pages). The three Facebook pages sharing LGBTQ+ related are aparatorul, doar.ortodoxia, and DreaptaCREDlNTA, all linking to aparatorul.md.

This is the site registered in the Republic of Moldova of Apărătorul Ortodox (The Orthodox Defender), ‘an alternative portal of Christian-Orthodox thought and attitude’. Facebook indicates that all pages are curated from Moldova. Still, the content is targeting the Romanian audience. For example, under the heading ‘Juridical articles’ the site proposes a form for parents refusing to provide medical records for their children, because of GDPR (an European directive, compulsory inside the European Union, but not in the Republic of Moldova) and presents a petition against Romanian digital ID cards.

Both site and social media pages discuss Christian celebrations and Christian life and, in this context, attack the LGBTQ+ community, alongside organizations working on health education (including sexual health) and LGBT civil rights. The pages also spread European Union related conspiracy theories and support ultra-orthodox voices within the Orthodox church. The AI-based PROMPT model classifies the posts of aparatorul, doar.ortodoxia, DreaptaCREDlNTA under three predetermined anti-LGBTQ+ narratives: Gender and LGBTQ+ ideologies have a corrupting influence on morally pure societies.

The ‘natural family structure' and 'natural order' need to be protected; The West is using LGBTQ+ rights and inclusion as a tool of cultural colonialism, trying to force its corrupt values onto the rest of the world; An imagined ‘gender ideology’ is dominating Western liberal democracies (Gayropa).

Screen captures showing coordinated behavior in three Facebook pages, curated in the Republic of Moldova, but targeting the Romanian audiences. The posts attack NGOs promoting sexual education and ‘gender ideologies’ (left) and the European Union, that supposedly wants to allow gender change at any age, without parents’ consent (right).

It is plausible that aparatorul.md acts as a conspiracy theory entrepreneur, launching different narrative plots in Romanian, to be later circulated on social media.

On 30 October 2025, the three Facebook pages of aparatorul.md shared a text accusing an important supermarket chain in Romania of financing ‘LGBT propaganda in Romanian villages’.

On 9 February 2026, an AUR member of the Parliament adopted this narrative line in a post on Facebook, and one week later, the supermarket chain published a point of view, denying any involvement and labelling the narrative as ‘false information’.

The three pages promoting aparatorul.md content were launched in 2014, 2017 and 2022 respectively. They identify themselves as a website, as media, and simultaneously as a religious organisation, and have almost 225,000 followers combined, in February 2026. The site itself appears to have been founded in 2012, publishes articles without signatures and has no contact details. It runs advertising through a Google ad account used also by a site about food and plants (pentruea.com). An indication of the current year (‘Year 7534 since the creation of the world’) shows that the site follows the Russian Orthodox calendar.

The Russian Orthodox Church that has a large influence in the Republic of Moldova. The orthodox faith is often presented as a counterweight to the ‘LGBT ideology’. Dumnezeu / God appears in 166 posts sharing toxic narratives in the 14-months PROMPT Romanian sample, while biserica / church in 73. Most of these posts are classifies in the pure nation narrative cluster. 

Hate takes a pause during (some) holidays

An analysis of a whole sample of 14,987 posts containing words or expressions referring to LGBTQ+, which were either classified by the PROMPT AI-based model in toxic narrative clusters or outside these clusters, shows an interesting pattern. High percentage of posts marching toxic narratives were during November 2024, when the first round of presidential elections and the Parliamentary elections took place, and in December 2024, when the second round of presidential elections was scheduled, but never took place, as the whole electoral process was annulled by the Romanian constitutional court.

The level of matching posts with toxic narratives reached 34 percent in November and 33 percent in December 2024. In May 2025, when the presidential election was rescheduled, and in June 2025, the month following the presidential election, the levels of posts matching toxic narratives also reached 32 percent and 29 percent. In absolute numbers, the Presidential election months and the month following electoral periods were the most intense, with over 1,500 of posts on LGBTQ+.

In the months following elections there were arguments about the election results and many individuals contested the results. In many families and groups of friends, the Christmas holidays in 2024 were very difficult, because of political arguments related to the presidential election. The lowest percentage of posts containing anti-LGBTQ+ narratives were during the summer holiday (August 2025) – 22 percent.

This pattern is similar to the one identified by a team of researchers studying malicious online acts targeting the American audiences between 2015 and 2017. Douglas Almond, Xinming Du and Alana Vogel reached the conclusion that Russian holidays predict troll activity. Trolling has a lower intensity during normal work holidays.

Many posts and comments in the sample of more than 4,000 toxic items share extremely violent language (unquotable), especially when the discussion is about elections or is about alleged EU actions in defending the LGBTQ+ people. Sometimes violent language, referring to LGBT people, is used to harass public figures, be they politicians or TV commentators who are not part of LGBTQ+.

These posts usually belong to fake identities and were not taken down by the platforms even if they do not follow platform rules and they are, in some cases, more than one year old. Platforms declare they are not allowing violence, incitement to violence or harassment, nor that they would accept fake identities. The PROMPT sample of toxic narrative posts includes the names of many Romanian politicians but not posts signed by these politicians or public figures.

Several conservative leaders, like Călin Georgescu, George Simion or Diana Șoșoacă post video content that is more difficult to transcribe and analyse with automatic tools. This does not mean that the video content is not harmful or is not influential. In the electoral contexts of 2024 and 2025, the Romanian name that appears the most in toxic posts is that of Elena Lasconi, the counter-candidate of Călin Georgescu: 216 times.

One post said: 

• ‘I seriously consider moving out of the country if Lasconi wins, I don’t want to stay and watch Romania turn into a country full of gay people. Lasconi is pro-LGBT, pro-Ukraine, pro-NATO... it couldn’t get any worse than that.’ (Item 16363, automatic AI translation from Romanian).

Georgescu is mentioned 195 times, and CG, his initials, 40 times, followed by Nicușor (Dan) and (George) Simion, the main presidential candidates in 2025, each of them with 164 mentions. The main narrative is the pure nation narrative, and Elena Lasconi and Nicușor Dan are hate targets. One post on the independent candidate Dan for the Presidency said: 

• ‘Rest assured that nobody is biting the bait anymore. The idea is that, out of all of them, Nicusor is cancer. He has all the Franco-homosexual connections that can send Romania to war for the unfortunate team within the EU. 

A snitch and docile, an enforcer and an LGBT-ist. Iohannis was a boss compared to him. Fml’ (Item 18160, automatic AI translation from Romanian that missed one curse and one unquotable word). Yet, the name that appears the most is not the name of a Romanian politician, but of philanthropist and businessman George Soros: 289 posts.

Two of these posts, for example, sustained the direct financial implication of Soros in Romanian debates:

• ‘Tudorel is paid by CNN to do LGBT propaganda and against nationalism and everything related to Christianity; he did this in 2016, 2020, and in 2024 against Trump; he is also paid and directed by Soros and his acolytes!’ (Item 16862; automatic AI translation from Romanian).
• ‘You will rot, you LGBT-ist, servant of the intelligence services and of Soros. You’ll lose brilliantly, I can’t wait.’ (Item 16988; automatic AI translation from Romanian).

In the disinformation narratives, Soros is usually associated, at global level, with conservative conspiracy theories and the toxic content shared in Romanian aligns itself with internationally shared narratives.

The PROMPT tool used for this analysis 

With the help of a multidisciplinary team, the PROMPT project developed three tools to identify toxic narratives on social media: a corpus analyzer, a narrative propagation tracing tool and a Wikipedia sensitivity barometer. Out of these three tools, only the Wikipedia barometer is publicly available now. Information on the evolutions of the wiki pages related to Romanian elections can be accessed here: https://wikisensibarometer.disinfo-prompt.eu/rankings/ROMANIAN%20ELECTIONS. The corpus analyzer and the narrative propagation tracing tool are not publicly available, as they contain social media databases with very sensitive data, such as posts with offensive language and explicit content targeting public people. While these posts are already public, a searchable collection of these items has a larger potential to harm a person, as compared to scattered messages on several social platforms, posted over a period of several years.

A print screen of PROMPT corpus analyser, showing the narrative clusters and the rhetoricalpatterns identified by AI in posts in Romanian, referring to George Soros.

For this article, the PROMPT corpus analyzer was used. The analyzer allows researchers to explore a database by language, by predetermined narrative themes and by predetermined rhetorical figures. It also allows items search and analysis by keywords.

A print screen of PROMPT corpus analyzer, with an AI-based discussion of the rhetorical toolsused by an anti-LGBTQ+ post.

One of the interesting features of the analyser is the automatic, AI-based discussion, of each individual post.

This discussion includes a translation into English of the respective post, the main claim of the post (an abstract) and an explanation of the rhetorical instruments the author of the post used to convince and manipulate the audience: who is the target, what are the emotional triggers used, what are the main disinformation tools involved. For example, in Virgiliu Vlăescu’s post, AI identifies as claim: Legalising homosexual marriages causes major harm to family life.

The target is individual; the emotional triggers: group identity threatened ("Us vs. Them”); persuasion techniques: name calling or labelling; rhetorical devices: climax; lexicon categories: belligerent.