Original article (in Serbian) was published on 3/3/2024; Author: Aleksa Ćirić
Several Serbian web portals covered the estimates of those gathered at the “Student edict” protest in Nis on 1 March, specifically addressing claims that there were 200,000 demonstrators in Nis. Alo, B92, Srbija danas and Novosti shared a photo from a post on the Telegram channel Istocna buducnost, showing a massive protest in Athens. A section of the protest is circled, which, according to the author, represents “the size of the square in Nis compared to Athens”. However, the circled area is significantly smaller than the actual area of King Milan Square in Nis.
Although FN Tragac is not in a position to provide an estimate of the number of people present at the protest in Nis, we draw attention to the manipulations by certain media outlets that, through comparisons with protests in Athens, attempted to downplay the number of attendees in Nis.
The Telegram channel “Istocna buducnost”, followed by tabloids, published a collage made up of two identical photos of Athens’ central Syntagma Square, showing a large crowd. The only difference between the photos in the collage is that the right side has a circled section meant to represent the dimensions of King Milan Square in Nis. “In the photo on the left, we see Athens and, according to objective estimates, around 200,000 people at the protest. On the image to the right, we can see the size of the square in Nis is circled in comparison to Athens”, the channel claims, as reported by the tabloids.
However, the crowd estimation tool MapChecking does not agree with the “evidence” provided by the media and the channel. According to this tool, the area of King Milan Square is slightly less than 12,000 square meters. On the other hand, the circled area of the Syntagma Square section in Athens in the photo from the tabloids and Telegram is about 4,800 square meters. Therefore, the claim that the right-side photo of Syntagma represents the size of the central square in Nis is not true.
If we assume, in the case of Nis, that there were 1.5 people per square meter at King Milan Square during the protest (and the density was almost certainly higher at certain moments), the result is that about 17,000 people could have gathered there. When it comes to the section of Syntagma Square in Athens that is circled in the photo on Telegram, the estimated number of people using the same principle is about 7,200 (although, in this case, too, the crowd density was almost certainly higher). It should also be noted that neither the media nor the channel mentioned that the demonstrators in Nis were also gathered in several surrounding streets, not just on the square itself.
