Disinformation was already a problem in Bolivia and it has intensified with recent crises in the country, such as the fires in the Chiquitania region occurring since mid-2019, as well as the incidents in October and November 2019 and later immediately after the interim government took office. Examples of this include messages that highlighted the role of CIA in making #BoliviaNoHayGolpe a trending topic in the state of Virginia, where the agency has its headquarters, and the dissemination of a fake photo in which Evo Morales and Chapo Guzman were photoshopped into an image with Pablo Escobar (Gallagher, 2019). During this period, as has been previously mentioned, Luis Suarez used an algorithm to amplify content and hashtags, such as #pitita and #NoFueGolpe. He retweeted content 3,000 times a day over a period of ten days (Díaz Arnau, 2020a). In an interview, he states that Morales’ cybertroopers not only disseminated disinformation but also mass reported against citizens critical to the government, taking advantage of the newly created accounts with few followers that posted that there was no coup in Bolivia. As a result, he designed an algorithm to identify those accounts and amplify their tweets. (Díaz Arnau, 2020b) Table 2: Observed Strategies, Tools and Techniques of Social Media Manipulation in Bolivia Account Types Messaging and Valence Content and Platforms Communication Strategies Automated bots, Humans Pro-government, pro-party Attacks on opposition Distracting messages Driving polarisation, Suppressing speech Disinformation, Data driven strategies, Trolls, Amplification strategies Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook Source: Authors’ evaluations based on data collected. Blank spaces indicate no evidence was found. Organizational Capacity and Resources There are no details about how cyber troops in Bolivia are organized nor the resources allocated for their activities. Table 3: Cyber Troop Capacity in Bolivia Team Size Resources Spent Activity Levels (USD) Temporary Coordination Somewhat centralised Capacity Measure Medium Source: Authors’ evaluations based on data collected. Blank spaces indicate no evidence was found. References Analysis: Fires, fake news and «digital warriors» roil Bolivia election race. (2019, October 17). BBC Monitoring. https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/product/c2016061 BBC Monitoring. (2020a, May 8). Bolivia, Peru media highlights 6 May 2019. BBC Monitoring. https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/product/c200supf BBC Monitoring. (2020b, May 14). Bolivia, Peru media highlights 13 May 2020. BBC Monitoring. https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/product/c201plnh 52