The social media manager, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Frontier he uploads posts on the party’s official pages while branch pages are run by the party’s township-level committees. He said the research team also boosts the party’s central and women’s pages. “They spend on average about K100,000 a month per page, though in the last year it may have increased somewhat.” He said the party also tries to get its supporters to spread information from their personal accounts and via unofficial supporters’ groups on Facebook. “Most of the [groups] are public and very easy to join. I think research team members have joined supporters’ groups and are using them to spread information from group to group and among personal accounts,” he said, adding that the team shares content with more than 200 supporters’ groups. There are also many seemingly unaffiliated Facebook pages that promote political parties. The pages “Competitor” and “Effective”, which are not included on the Press Council’s list of official online media, often post stories critical of the government and in praise of the military and the USDP, and the USDP often promotes these pages. Administrators for the Competitor and Effective pages did not respond to requests for comment. Three journalists in Nay Pyi Taw who spoke on condition of anonymity told Frontier they had heard of Facebook page administrators offering paid contracts to writers to promote USDP party pages. They say the money for the contracts is not from the party’s election fund but comes from individual member’s private accounts.