2020 GLOBAL INVENTORY OF ORGANIZED SOCIAL MEDIA MANIPULATION Sudan, Sweden, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, and Zimbabwe (see Figure 1). This year, we identified three key trends in cyber troop activity. Cyber Troop Activity Continues to Rise Globally Increasingly, states and other political actors are using social media to disrupt elections, democracy, and human rights. This year, we have found evidence of 81 countries with cyber troop activity, an increase from our previous report where we analyzed information operations in 70 countries. The strategies, tools, and techniques of social media manipulation continue to be a pervasive part of public life across all regime types. While we have identified many instances of social media manipulation used domestically during elections, they continue to be used as a tool of geopolitical influence. In 2020, for example, authoritarian countries like Russia, China and Iran capitalized on coronavirus disinformation to amplify anti-democratic narratives designed to undermine trust in health officials and government administrators. Platform Companies Combat Cyber Troop Activity Through Account Takedowns Platform companies try to limit the misuse of their platforms by taking down accounts that appear to be managed by cyber troops. Public announcements by Facebook and Twitter reveal that between January 2019 and November 2020 more than 10,893 Facebook accounts, 12,588 Facebook pages, 603 Facebook groups, 1,556 Instagram accounts, and 294,096 Twitter accounts were taken down by the platforms (see Figure 2). In this timeframe, Facebook also reported that almost US $10 million was spent on political advertisements by cyber troops operating around the world. Private Firms Increasingly Run Manipulation Campaigns The number of cyber troop campaigns run by government or political party actors involving contracts with a private strategic communication firm has been steadily growing. In 2020, we found private firms operating in forty-eight countries deploying computational propaganda on behalf of a political actor. These companies often create sock puppet accounts, identify audiences for micro-targeting, or use bot or other amplification strategies to prompt the trending of certain political messages. Although tracking down contractual evidence of private contracting firms can be difficult, we found that almost US $60 million was spent on hiring firms for computational propaganda since 2009. [ 2 ]