This report presents the results of the monitoring of institutional and municipal communication on social media and official websites during the election campaign period of the 2025 local elections in North Macedonia. The monitoring aimed to assess how public institutions communicated with citizens in the twenty days preceding the first round of local elections, focusing on compliance with the Electoral Code and the principle of institutional neutrality.
This report contributes to a wider initiative aimed at assessing the potential misuse of administrative resources (MAR). Within this framework, 70 civil society monitors from 10 civil society organizations (CSOs) conducted monitoring across 26 municipalities with a view to assessing the presence of practices involving the use of public office, activities, or resources during the 2025 local elections in ways that could influence equality and fairness of electoral competition.1 , This report complements the aforementioned efforts, and its findings reveal that public institutions, both at the central and local level, frequently used their official communication channels for promotional purposes that closely resembled campaign messaging.
Nearly 60 percent of the analysed Facebook content across 26 municipalities and 10 central institutions had a promotional character, while only 40 percent were neutral informational posts. Such imbalance indicates that official communication during the election period served not only to inform but also to reinforce political visibility and public recognition of incumbents, often blurring the distinction between governance and campaigning.
