Generally, there is a growing concern in the Czech Republic that the media landscape is turning more and more partisan, with various outlets leveraging their connections to politics and business, while political parties increasingly maintain websites and outlets solely devoted to their viewpoints by providing what they call ‘alternative information’, but which is actually fake or deliberate disinformation that distorts reality (Schultheis, 2017). It appears that these developments have affected the public’s trust in media in general: 77% of respondents in a recent GLOBSEC (2020) polling stated they believe that their media is (rather) not free, while 36% thought that the government influences media, and 39% of Czechs believe oligarchs and strong financial groups influence the media in their country. Finally, Freedom House (2019) has raised concerns about the continued intimidation and harassment of journalists by public officials in their 2019 report on the country (Euractive & AFP, 2019). Table 1: Organizational Form and Prevalence of Social Media Manipulation in Czech Republic Initial Government Politicians Private Contractors Civil Society Citizens & Report Agencies & Parties Organizations Influencers x x Source: Authors’ evaluations based on data collected. Blank spaces indicate no evidence was found. Strategies, Tools, and Techniques The disinformation narratives spread throughout the Czech Republic via social media, particularly Facebook, and other websites tend to aim at polarizing the public, often misinterpreting statements or statistics to drive pro-Russian and anti-EU narratives (Brokes, 2020; Sybera, 2019; Syrovátka, 2019). Strikingly, disinformation did not increase too much during the 2019 EU parliamentary election, though the final week of the campaign saw some increase in news articles on the election, most of which presented an anti-EU viewpoint. For the most part, however, news media did not share their own stories during the campaign, but amplified messages of politicians, many of which contained disinformation (Syrovátka, 2019). EU elections are also not perceived as particularly important elections by the Czech public, which also explains why the election experienced less intense disinformation and influence campaigns compared to other domestic elections. Next to this issue of fake news and disinformation, observers have reported on trolls, hackers and Twitterbots hired by Russia being active in Czech online spaces (Heijmans, 2017; Sybera, 2019). However, there were no reports available on such or other more sophisticated cyber troop techniques being employed by domestic political actors of the Czech Republic. Table 2: Observed Strategies, Tools and Techniques of Social Media Manipulation in Czech Republic Account Types Messaging and Valence Content and Platforms Communication Strategies Human Support Disinformation Facebook Attack opposition Trolls Driving Divisions Distracting Source: Authors’ evaluations based on data collected. Blank spaces indicate no evidence was found. 113