considered to be ineffective in 2016, which is thought to be one of the reasons why the NPP succeeded in winning a majority of the votes that year. Table 1: Organizational Form and Prevalence of Social Media Manipulation in Ghana Initial Government Politicians Private Contractors Civil Society Citizens & Report Agencies & Parties Organizations Influencers x x x Source: Authors’ evaluations based on data collected. Blank spaces indicate no evidence was found. Strategies, Tools, and Techniques Ahead of the 2020 elections, Ghana is expecting a surge in fake news, disinformation and political propaganda. Both main parties are preparing for taking using social media for their campaigns. According to a study published by the University of Exeter, the NPP has already compiled a social media team with over 700 people (Gadjanova et al., 2019). Facebook and WhatsApp are the two main platforms where political messages as well as disinformation are spread. At present it appears that automated techniques are not used by domestic actors in Ghana. Rather, it is human actors that spread information through fake and real accounts. However, Ghana is no stranger to data-driven techniques such as microtargeting (Ahiabenu, 2019). The NPP and NDC are also maintaining an international outreach element to their campaigns. For example, the NPP has a UK page called “NPP UK Communications” 1. Meanwhile, the growing interest in online campaigning has created a market for digital entrepreneurs in Ghana. Young, tech-savvy individuals hope to find work with local or national politicians to maintain their online presence. Some citizens volunteer to set-up and maintain social media accounts for political actors. Interestingly, others take a different route and attempt to extort money from politicians by threatening to circulate negative information (true or false) about them (Gadjanova et al., 2019). Finally, it appears that Russia has been leveraging tech-savvy citizens in Ghana. In early 2020 a CNN investigation led to Facebook removing 203 pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram that were operating from Ghana and Nigeria, on the basis that they were for coordinated inauthentic behavior in relation to Russian influence operations. Most of the accounts were fake and were being used to manage pages posing as blogs or non-governmental organizations. Additionally, CNN found a similar network on Twitter, and the platform subsequently removed 71 accounts that had a total of 68,000 followers. All the accounts that were removed were focusing their activity on the United States on behalf of Russia. CNN’s investigation also showed that the people working as trolls in Ghana seem to have had no idea that their work was connected to Russian influence operations (Frimpong, 2020; Polglase et al., 2020). Table 2: Observed Strategies, Tools and Techniques of Social Media Manipulation in Ghana Account Types Messaging and Valence Communication Platforms Strategies Human Fake accounts Support Attack Opposition Disinformation Data-driven strategies Facebook WhatsApp Instagram Source: Authors’ evaluations based on data collected. Blank spaces indicate no evidence was found. 155