Honduras Introduction In 2009, a military coup removed President Manuel Zalaya. Since then, Honduras has struggled with fragile democratic institutions. The first elections after the coup in which there was participation by opposition parties were held in 2013 and right-wing Juan Orlando Hernández won. He was re-elected in 2017, but there were claims of fraud. The government and the Organization of American States established in 2016 the Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH), which was ended in January 2020. Additionally, poverty and inequality have been persistent historical problems. The country has also one of the highest rates of violence in the world and, in addition to impunity of crimes and abuses committed by the judiciary and the police, it is one of the most dangerous places to be a journalist, an activist or a woman (Human Rights Watch, 2019). Because of this, there are substantial flows of emigrants and asylum-seekers. In 2019, after the Congress passed two bills on health and education reforms, a wave of anti-government protests took place. Honduran security forces used excessive force and several people were injured and, by the end of the year, at least six people were killed (Human Rights Watch, 2019). In this context, freedom of expression is often undermined. An Overview of Cyber Troop Activity in Honduras Organizational Form Online attacks towards journalists are on the rise, usually with death threats content (2019 World Press Freedom Index | Reporters Without Borders, 2019). Those media outlets and journalists that are critical of the government or that cover sensitive topics are often subject to threats, blocking, harassment and event conviction. It was documented that the government, through its National Direction of Research and Intelligence, paid 355,000 euros to Hacking Team in 2014 for its Galileo platform (Pérez de Acha, 2016) to hack and spy on opposition. As regards online social media manipulation, there is evidence that the government used Facebook and Twitter to generate support (Cryst & García Camargo, 2020) as early as 2015 (Garay, 2019) and with significant operations around the 2017 elections that also attacked opposition (Cryst & García Camargo, 2020). It is documented that the government pays for social media ads and fake profiles (Garay, 2019), as well as content creators, influencers, and journalists (Cryst & García Camargo, 2020). Finally, it has been noted that Archimedes Group, a private Israeli firm managed Facebook groups aligned to the government. However, there is no evidence of who was the client of the company. Table 1: Organizational Form and Prevalence of Social Media Manipulation in Honduras Initial Report 2015 Civil Society Citizens & Organizations Influencers Content creators, social media influencers and journalists Source: Authors’ evaluations based on data collected. Blank spaces indicate no evidence was found. 167 Government Agencies Evidence found Politicians Parties & Private Contractors Archimedes Group

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