2020 GLOBAL INVENTORY OF ORGANIZED SOCIAL MEDIA MANIPULATION Report Methodology nt Analy sis nte Co Given the nature of disinformation operations, there are almost certainly cyber troop activities that have not been publicly documented. However, for those that have been publicly identified, we have seen these cases grow in number over time (Bradshaw & L Howard, 2017, 2018, 2019). While this report ature Rev ie rar e it w in no way is intended to provide a complete picture of how state actors are operating in this space, we can begin to build a bigger picture by piecing together public information. The methodology for this report consists of four stages: (1) a systematic content analysis of news articles reporting on cyber troop activity; se Studies Ca (2) a secondary literature review of public archives and scientific reports; (3) drafting country case studies; and (4) expert consultations. E Content Analysis Consultat ert io xp n Over the past four years, our four-stage methodology has allowed us to successfully capture and analyze a wide range of public documents that shed light on globally organized manipulation campaigns. Content analysis is an established research method in communication and media studies (Herring, 2009). It has been used to help understand how the Internet and social media interact with political action, regime transformation, and digital control (Bradshaw and Howard, 2018a, 2017b; Edwards, Howard & Joyce, 2013; Joyce, Antonio &Howard, 2013; Strange et al., 2013). This qualitative content analysis was conducted to understand the range of state actors who actively use social media to manipulate public opinion, as well as their capacity, strategies, and resources. We modelled our content analysis after last year’s report, using purposive sampling to build a coded spreadsheet of specific variables that appear in news articles. The [ 6 ]