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Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the European Research Council for the research project, “Computational Propaganda: Investigating
the Impact of Algorithms and Bots on Political Discourse in Europe,” Proposal 648311, 2015–2020, Philip N. Howard, Principal Investigator. Additional
support for this study has been provided by the Adessium Foundation, Civitates Initiative, Ford Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Luminate, Newmark
Philanthropies, and Open Society Foundation.
For their assistance and advice on this research, we are grateful to Ualan Campbell-Smith, Amelie Henle, Antonella Perini and Sivanne Shavel for collecting
the preliminary data and drafting country profiles about social media manipulation for the countries outlined in this report. We would also like to thank
Rutendo Chabikwa for her assistance with further research and data analysis for this report. We are also extremely grateful to Rosana Aleksoska, Daniel
Arnaudo, Ana Brakus, Darko Brkan, Muslimbek Buriev, Rutendo Chabikwa, Niki Cheong, Thomas Colley, Regina Coyula, Tijana Cvjetićanin, Brian Dooley,
Iyad el-Baghdadi, Roberto Gelado Marcos, Marlon Hernández-Anzora, Katarína Klingová, Peter Kreko, Cristian León, Allison McManus, Olivier Milland,
Nargiza Muratalieva, Vidya Narayanan, Lisa-Marie Neudert, Ben Nimmo, Alina Ostling, Belén Puebla Martínez, Khadeja Ramali, Talal Raza, Tom Sear,
James Shire, Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, and Weaam Youssef, as well as the many anonymous experts we consulted for this project. Their country-specific
expertise and networks were essential for ensuring the reliability and validity of our data. We thank them for their time and assistance in reviewing country
profiles, and for providing us with additional sources, citations, and data-points to include in this report.
Samantha Bradshaw completed her PhD at the Oxford Internet
Institute, University of Oxford. Between 2016-2020, Samantha worked for
the Computational Propaganda Project as a core member of the research
team, where conducted research on foreign influence operations and the
spread of disinformation by state-backed actors. Samantha’s research
has been featured in numerous media articles, including the Washington
Post, the Financial Times, and CNN. Currently, Samantha is a postdoctoral fellow at the Internet Observatory & the Digital Civil Society Lab
at Stanford University.
Hannah Bailey is a doctoral candidate in Social Data Science at the Oxford
Internet Institute, and a researcher at the Computational Propaganda
Project. Her research focuses on China’s use of state-sponsored
digital disinformation.
Philip N. Howard is Director of the Oxford Internet Institute, and a statutory
Professor at Balliol College, Oxford. He writes about information politics
and international affairs, and is the author of eight books, including The
Managed Citizen, The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, and
Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up. He
has won multiple "best book" awards, and his research and commentary
writing has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, and
many international media outlets. Foreign Policy magazine named him a
"Global Thinker" for 2017 and the National Democratic Institute awarded
him their "Democracy Prize" for pioneering the social science of fake news.
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Authors' Biographies