BAHRAIN Introduction Computational propaganda in the Kingdom of Bahrain takes place in an environment of political repression. Government and pro-government trolls are known to manipulate the online information ecosystem (Freedom House, 2019). The height of activity is reported to have occurred in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring, with limited coverage in recent years. In February 2011 Bahrain witnessed thousands of pro-democracy activists taking to the streets to demand political and social reform. The demonstrations were repressed violently, and this repression has been maintained with the criminalization of online criticism of the ruling family and sustained social media aggression (Dooley, 2015). The CIVICUS Monitor (2020) rating of human rights violations reports that Bahrain is ranked as closed. Bahrain’s legal framework bans criticism of the royal family and imposes strict limits on content. In 2014 the King of Bahrain ratified a law imposing a prison sentence of up to seven years on anyone who insults him publicly (Elwazer, 2014). For example, in August 2017 a man was sentenced to six years in prison for retweeting an insult to the king (Freedom House, 2018). Article 70 of the Media Regulation Law penalizes content that is deemed ‘fake news’ or critical of public figures (Gulf Centre for Human Rights, 2018), and thus any site that is critical of the government is vulnerable to being blocked by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (Freedom House, 2018). The Gulf Centre for Human Rights (2018) reports that the prime concern of the Bahraini Cybercrime Directorate is content on social media. Nabeel Rajab, thenPresident of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, was sentenced to two years in prison for ‘broadcasting fake news’ and for tweets alleging torture in Bahraini prisons (BBC, 2017). Likewise, women’s rights defender Ghada Jamsheer was imprisoned in June 2016 for four cases of defamation related to her tweets; she was fined 10,000 dinars (US$26,500) and given a one year suspended sentence (Gulf Centre for Human Rights, 2016). An Overview of Cyber Troop Activity in Bahrain Organizational Form Multiple organizations are tasked with monitoring and manipulating social media. In November 2013, a Cyber Safety Directorate at the Ministry of State for Telecommunication Affairs was launched to monitor websites and social media networks (Freedom House, 2018). The Ministry of the Interior stated in July 2018 that, in the interest of safety, security, and order, the General Directorate of Anti-corruption and Economic & Electronic Security should monitor “social media accounts that violate the law and harm civil peace and the social fabric” (Ministry of Interior, 2018). Human rights defender Maryam Al Khawaja has claimed that people from the Ministry of the Interior have set up fake accounts to target her with abuse by alleging she works for Iran, is a traitor, an extremist, and a liar (Dooley, 2015). Opposition activists received threatening messages from an Instagram account which claimed to belong to Truki Al-Majed, a lieutenant in the Interior Ministry. The account demanded activists shut down their social media accounts within 24 hours (Bahrain Mirror, 2018). Some activists believe that the troll community targeting human rights defenders is made up of activists loyal to the government; organized based on language skills and assigned specific activists or NGO researchers to target (Dooley, 2011). Western public relations firms are reported to play a role in reputation management and surveillance. According to watchdog Bahrain Watch, the government has hired eighteen PR firms for promotional campaigns since February 2011, spending at least US$32 million in 34