2019 GLOBAL INVENTORY OF ORGANISED SOCIAL MEDIA MANIPULATION Sweden, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, 70 Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Number of Countries Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. Growing Evidence of Computational Propaganda Around the World We found evidence of organised social media manipulation 48 28 2017 2018 2019 150% the increase in countries using organised social media manipulation campaigns over the last two years campaigns in 70 countries, up from 48 countries in 2018 and 28 countries in 2017. Some of this growth comes from new entrants who are experimenting with the tools and techniques have begun publishing limited information about influence of computational propaganda during elections or as a new tool operations on their platforms – have taken action against of information control. However, journalists, academics, and cyber troops engaged in foreign influence operations in seven activists are also better equipped with digital tools and a more countries: China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and precise vocabulary to identify, report, and uncover instances Venezuela. Although this measure does not capture the extent of formally organized social media manipulation. Over the to which foreign influence operations are taking place, we can past three years we have been able to refine our language confidently begin to build a picture of this highly secretive and search terms for identifying instances of computational phenomenon. propaganda, and we found that many countries have displayed elements of formally organized social media manipulation for the past decade. As a result, we suggest that computational China Flexes its Misinformation Muscle propaganda has become a ubiquitous and pervasive part of the Until recently, we found that China rarely used social media to digital information ecosystem. manipulate public opinion in other countries. The audience for computational propaganda has mainly focused on domestic The Co-Option of Social Media in Authoritarian Regimes platforms, such as Weibo, WeChat, and QQ. However, in 2019 the Chinese government began to employ global social media In many authoritarian regimes, computational propaganda platforms to paint Hong Kong’s democracy advocates as has become a tool of information control that is strategically violent radicals with no popular appeal (Lee Myers and Mozur used in combination with surveillance, censorship, and threats 2019). Beyond domestically bound platforms, the growing of violence. We have catalogued the kinds of campaigns sophistication and use of global social networking technologies authoritarian countries have used against journalists, political demonstrates how China is also turning to these technologies dissidents, and the broader society, and found three distinct as a tool of geopolitical power and influence. ways in which computational propaganda is used: (1) to suppress fundamental human rights; Facebook is Still Number One (2) to discredit political opposition; and Despite there being more platforms than ever, Facebook (3) to drown out political dissent. of the reason for this could be explained by its market size – remains the dominant platform for cyber troop activity. Part as one of the world’s largest social networking platforms – as The co-option of social media technologies provides authoritarian well as the specific affordances of the platform, such as close regimes with a powerful tool to shape public discussions and family and friend communication, a source of political news spread propaganda online, while simultaneously surveilling, and information, or the ability to form groups and pages. Since censoring, and restricting digital public spaces. 2018, we have collected evidence of more cyber troop activity on image- and video-sharing platforms such as Instagram and A Limited Number of Foreign Influence Operations by Highly Sophisticated Actors YouTube. We have also collected evidence of cyber troops running campaigns on WhatsApp. We think these platforms Foreign influence operations are an important area of concern will grow in importance over the next few years as more but attributing computational propaganda to foreign state people use these social networking technologies for political actors remains a challenge. Facebook and Twitter – who communication. [ 2 ]