Strategies, Tools, and Techniques Automated accounts: There is a variety of social media manipulation strategies and techniques being used by the various groups, with some groups using multiple techniques simultaneously, and others focusing on one. An increasingly common strategy is the use of automated bot-like accounts to promote hashtags, and spam online discourse with a particular message, which in turn makes it seem like a natural topic of discussion organically chosen by Indonesian netizens. Research conducted before the 2019 elections by the DFRLab found that about 25% of tweets posted between March 10th and April 10th (a week before the elections) that promoted the hashtag #JokowiLagi (“Jokowi again”), were posted using automating programs, alongside a significant amount of duplicated content. The research further found that programs like TweetCaster, IFTTT, and Twittbot.net were common for automating the posting and retweeting of hashtags. There is still insufficient evidence that links these bots to political actors, however, since parties have become more reliant on buzzer teams to amplify messages, it could be possible that these operations were conducted by a buzzer team working for the Jokowi campaign (DFRLab, 2019). Evidence of bot-like manipulation has also been revealed leading up to the 2017 Jakarta Gubernatorial elections, where researchers for the Centre for Innovation Policy and Governance found that at least some buzzers teams had created hundreds of bots to promote the campaign of Basuki “Ahok” Purama (Lamb, 2018a). A notable case study of effective bot activity in the Indonesian general elections was the targeting of Sandiaga “Sandi” Uno, Prabowo’s running mate, days after the campaign period began in September 2018. Two websites that were dedicated to attacking him, skandalsandiaga.com and sandiagaundercover.com, suddenly went viral on social media platforms and were heavily promoted with the hashtag #SkandalSandiaga. An analysis by Drone Emprit found that most of the accounts behind the campaign had no followers, were created in the same month, and tended to have profile pictures of women, all indicating that these were automated accounts (Renaldi 2018). Another illuminating case study of bot-activity occurred in the Eastern region of West Papua. An investigation by the BBC and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute traced a network of bot accounts to InsightID, a Jakarta-based media company. These accounts spanned across at least four platforms spreading pro-government content about the region. One strategy they utilized was latching onto hashtags in support of the separatist movement and spamming them with positive stories, such as government investments in the region. Alternatively, bots would spread pictures with false captions that would suggest that the UN Human Rights commissioner responded “positively” to the state’s treatment of the region, while she was in fact “disturbed” by it. These accounts also spent heavily on paid ads in the US, UK, and Europe, with the intention of skewing international perceptions regarding the region in favor of the government. Facebook stated that it shut down more than 100 accounts from this group, which also reportedly spent significant amounts of money on advertisements (Strick & Syavira, 2019). Fake accounts: Hashtags are also promoted via buzzer teams using less technologically sophisticated techniques, but rather manually through authentic-looking accounts. In order to boost their authenticity, team members are often encouraged to use real profile pictures taken from Google, friends, or random Facebook and WhatsApp groups. Many choose to use pictures of beautiful women, which typically draw more attention. Evidence from one buzzer team suggests that members were provided with a hashtag list for promotion on a daily basis, which in a coordinated effort reached thousands of tweets a day, significantly increasing a hashtag’s chances of reaching trending status (Lamb, 2018a). 189