CZECH REPUBLIC Introduction The Czech Republic is a free democracy with a competitive media ecosystem. However, hyperpartisan reporting and the complicated relations between media, private business and politicians are cause for concern. Additionally, the country has experienced a number of corruption scandals where businesses attempted to meddle with politics directly (Freedom House, 2019). Billionaire Andreij Babiš acts as the country’s prime minister and leader of the Movement of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO) party, whose media holdings are held in a trust controlled by a close associate. In 2017, a leak exposed Babiš’ interference with the editorial policy of the daily newspaper MF Dnes. Allegedly, he had instructed the publication to publish of articles intended to damage his political rivals (Freedom House, 2018). Amid concerns about the political independence of traditional media, trust levels in news organizations are low at 33%, according to Reuters’ 2019 Digital News Report (Štětka, 2019). Increasingly Czechs access news online, through computers and smartphones and, in particular on social media networks, including Facebook (45%), YouTube (23%) and Facebook Messenger (15%). Trust in news on social media networks is even lower at 16%, and trust in news found through online searches is also relatively low (29%). An Overview of Cyber Troop Activity Czech Republic Organizational Form Politicians and parties engage intensively in campaigning against one another during elections and other politically sensitive events, though it appears that major disinformation operations and conspiracy attacks are supported by Russia. For example, President Miloš Zeman’s reelection campaign in late 2017 (the election took place in January 2018) was accompanied by a smear campaign spreading rumours that main his opposition, Jiří Drahoš, had connections to the secret police during the Communist era of the country. Analysts believe these allegations were spread by Russia (Freedom House, 2019). During the 2019 European parliamentary elections the right-wing Freedom and Direct Democracy party (SPD) was the most heavily involved in producing disinformation and other manipulative content. Sympathetic websites and partisan news outlets openly shared the SPD’s content, and the editor of one such website, Ivan David of Nová Republika (New Republic), even ran as the leader of the SPD ballot in the EU election (Syrovátka, 2019). At present, there are more than one hundred websites spreading disinformation in the Czech Republic (konspiratori.sk, 2020), some of the major platforms include Parlamentní listy (in English Parliamentary Letters, however, it has nothing to do with the Czech Parliament which has distanced itself from the site); AC24; AE News (also known as Aeronet); Nová Republika (New Republic); První Zprávy (First News); and Sputnik CZ (the Czech branch of the Kremlin’s international media outlet). The engagement numbers of these sites are in the millions: Parlamentní listy was found to have about 800,000 readers per month, and a total of about 8 million users in 2017 (Malcolm, 2020; Schultheis, 2017), while Sputnik CZ had over 2.5 million visitors in July 2018 alone (Klingová, 2018). Most of these outlets have found ways to engage Czech politicians as well. For example, Parlamentní offers politicians the ability to open accounts and reach out to readers through the platform. Paramentní has also received support from the Czech president, who has given about forty interviews to the outlet and has supplied them with exclusive information in the past (Malcolm, 2020). 112