Activists and journalists critical of the Angolan government have been prosecuted regularly in the past, leading to a great deal of self-censorship (Freedom House, 2020). However, President Lourenço has replaced several heads of media outlets and urged them to serve the public interest rather than individual politicians. At the same time, Lourenço established the Angolan Regulatory Body for Social Communication (ERCA) in 2017, which is able to investigate journalists and producers of online content without judicial oversight and can ban websites that are not adhering to “good journalism”. Moreover, a new penal code allows for jailing and fining individuals for acts such as spreading fake news, defamation, and “abuse of press freedom”, which Freedom House (2019b) deems somewhat contrary to the president’s pledge to increase media freedom in the country. Nevertheless, it appears that journalists are becoming more confident in highlighting cases of corruption and governmental misconduct through online platforms. While the government does not seem to be actively censoring or blocking the internet, they do have the ability to do so at least partially through the state-owned Angola Telecom (BizCommunity, 2017). They are starting to pay more attention to the internet, as social media bots made up about 9% of online traffic during the 2017 election, a majority of which originated abroad (How Africa Tweets, 2018). Only journalists and media organisations had more influence on public opinion, while politicians themselves remain somewhat absent from online debates (Lea, 2018). Notably, there is fairly little information available regarding online bot activity, so their exact origins and intentions are not well known. Moreover, social media platforms such as Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp are the most popular apps in Angola and Africa overall, making the tracking of information difficult (Dahir, 2018). In May 2019 Facebook announced that it had taken down a set of 265 Facebook and Instagram pages that were producing “inauthentic behaviour” towards African countries, including Angola. From December 2012 onwards over US$800,000 was spent on political ads primarily paid for by Archimedes Group, a political consultancy firm based in Israel. These ads targeted specific elections to promote or attack local politicians, though most of the efforts appear to have targeted the latest Nigerian election. In Angola, the focus was on just a few, health related Facebook pages (Bright, 2019; DFRLab, 2019). It remains unclear who paid the Archimedes Group for this operation (Timberg & Romm, 2019). The incident, however, highlights once again that most cyber troop activity in Angola has little to no connection to Angolan political actors, even though they may be profiting from it. Still, many politicians and ministries have established Twitter accounts to inform citizens on latest government actions and provide advice. These activities have increased significantly during the COVID-19 crisis (Tyburski, 2020), but there is little evidence of disinformation or other forms of manipulation by official channels. Table 2: Observed Strategies, Tools and Techniques of Social Media Manipulation in Angola Account Types Messaging and Valence Content and Platforms Communication Strategies Bots, Fake Pro-Government Support, Disinformation, Facebook Human Attack Opposition Amplification (Messenger) Twitter WhatsApp Instagram Source: Authors’ evaluations based on data collected. Blank spaces indicate no evidence was found. 6