Table 1: Organizational Form and Prevalence of Social Media Manipulation in Italy Initial Government Politicians & Private Civil Society Citizens & Report Agencies Parties Contractors Organizations Influencers 2016 Evidence found Web365, NextMediaWeb, and Casaleggio Associati Source: Authors’ evaluations based on data collected. Blank spaces indicate no evidence was found. Strategies, Tools, and Techniques Lega Nord and the Five Star Movement made use of both common and uncommon techniques of social media manipulation, especially on Facebook, mainly during the general election in 2018 and European Parliament elections in 2019. Disinformation campaigns on social media have already been documented in 2016 in the context of the Italian Constitutional Referendum (Bayer et al., 2019). There is evidence, for instance, that Lega Nord used an automated system called La Bestia to monitor news and social networks and thus coordinate their communication. This technique enabled them to be the first to comment on the news, forcing opponents into reactive strategies, polarizing discussions, and amplifying their messages (Joint Research Centre (European Commission), 2019). But the app also enabled the automated cross-posting of social media activities. Volunteers authorized an app to automatically like or embed the party and Matteo Salivini’s posts (Bayer et al., 2019). Lega Nord use real accounts from private individuals who turned themselves into bots, “selfbots” as the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab, 2018) calls them, which then all tweet the same messages (Figure 1). There is usually a “herder” or teacher, which creates new accounts or repurposes hijacked accounts for their botnet. However, while these selfbots send out automated messages, they remain human accounts, as, outside these tweets, they post individual content created by the actual users. Figure 1: “Selfbot” network tweeting the same message at the same time Source: DFR Lab (https://medium.com/dfrlab/electionwatch-italys-self-made-bots-200e2e268d0e) January 25, 2018 One other technique used by both parties is that of coordinating networks of websites that post fabricated content, support their narratives, and discredit their opponents. These are purposefully pushed by social media accounts as well as by leading politicians (Bayer et al., 2019). Although their interaction rates are high, analysis by the Reuters Institute for the Study 217