GEORGIA Introduction Georgia is a “partly free” democracy with a competitive but frequently partisan media landscape, which civil society groups have warned is increasingly at risk of the political influence of oligarchs and leaders of the governing Georgian Dream party (Freedom House, 2019). In 2017, civil society groups released a joint statement expressing concern about the recruitment of political allies of Bidzina Ivanishvili, chairman of the Georgian Dream party, to senior positions at the Georgian Public Broadcaster, which the statement describes as decreasingly critical of the government (Freedom House, 2019). In 2018, threats to the Georgian media ecosystem were brought to international attention when a long-standing legal dispute about the ownership of Rustavi 2, an opposition-aligned TV station, involved the European Court of Human Rights (Freedom House, 2019). In 2019, the ECHR ruled against the owners of the TV channel in a controversial ruling (Antidze, 2019). In 2020, the government has introduced greater control over digital information infrastructure (Freedom House, 2020). This combined with greater governmental control over the independent media and judiciary, along with growing evidence of disinformation and propaganda, have caused concern for civil rights activists monitoring the country (Visegrad Insight, 2020). Social media use by Georgia’s citizens is also high, with 60% of the country’s population (2.4 million) on Facebook. According to Visegrad Insight (2020), Facebook is the predominant social media platform, totalling around 81% of all social media (with platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and Instagram ranking under 5%). An Overview of Cyber Troop Activity in Georgia Organizational Form While Georgia is subject to multiple ongoing disinformation campaigns from Russia (discussed in the Russia case study), there is also evidence of computational propaganda originating from domestic sources. The former prime minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili, who resigned in the summer of 2018 due to disagreements with the party chairman Bidzina Ivanishvili, was exposed for buying likes to promote his posts on Facebook. In June 2018, Kvirikashvili and the government more widely were found to have paid for thousands of likes from accounts in India, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Pakistan, among others, after thousands of users commented “haha” on a Facebook post criticizing non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) (Gvadzabia, 2018). According to local news sources, the post rejected an ultimatum set by NGOs for the Justice Minister, Tea Tsulukiani, to resign for failing to nominate a candidate for the post of Chief Prosecutor. Kvirikashvili wrote that NGOs should not go beyond the mandate of their activities and criticised them for their own lack of transparency. The post spawned negative responses in comments and likes, which were countered by the allegedly bought likes (Gvadzabia, 2018). In 2019, Facebook also removed hundreds of pages linked to the government for coordinated inauthentic behaviour. Facebook stated it removed “39 Facebook accounts, 344 Pages, 13 Groups and 22 Instagram accounts as part of a domestic-focused network that originated in the country of Georgia”. The pages were attributed to “Panda”, an advertising agency in Georgia, as well as the Georgian Dream-led government (Facebook, 2019). Many of these pages bought ads, with approximately $316,000 USD spent on ads on Instagram and Facebook (Facebook, 2019). In response to the takedown, Transparency International Georgia (2019), a human rights watchdog, called on the Prosecutor’s office to launch an investigation into the activities. However, these calls have “thus far gone unanswered” (Visegrad Insight, 2020). 141