intentions and clients of the company, some of its activities focused on El Salvador, where it published content about the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (Gleicher, 2020). Table 1: Organizational Form and Prevalence of Social Media Manipulation in El Salvador Initial Government Politicians & Private Civil Society Citizens & Report Agencies Parties Contractors Organizations Influencers Evidence found Evidence found Evidence found. Evidence Among them, found Estraterra Source: Authors’ evaluations based on data collected. Blank spaces indicate no evidence was found. Strategies, Tools, and Techniques During the 2019 presidential campaign, candidates Carlos Calleja for the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), Hugo Martínez for the National Liberation Front (FMLN), and Nayib Bukele for the Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA) widely used social media— especially Facebook, not only to disseminate their electoral messages but also to attack each other (Meléndez, 2020). Manipulation techniques in the form of fake followers and disinformation were also observed. According to NIMD, all three candidates had followers with no posts nor profile pictures. Most of them had alphanumeric account names (Meléndez, 2020). The candidate with the most fake followers was Bukele. Indeed, he had been accumulating fake followers since his role as Mayor in Nuevo Cuscatlán (Unidad de Datos, 2018, p. 240). He accounted for 94% of the 256 thousand inactive accounts following the three candidates and 20% of his total followers (Unidad de Datos, 2018, p. 240). In order to analyse the Twitter landscape in the run-up of the elections, Internet activist Alberto Escorcia observed the accounts of President Salvador Sánchez Cerén, candidate Nayib Bukele, and ARENA party between 20 October and 23 November 2018. He found that around 9% of messages had signs of automation. Content of Bukele and the ARENA party were amplified by recently created accounts of less than a hundred followers, although those supporting Bukele showed signs of greater coordination. Salvador Sánchez Cerén was mostly amplified by official accounts that used TweetDeck (Simulación, Automatización y Coordinación. Una Mirada a La Conversación En Twitter En El Salvador Previo a Las Elecciones Presidenciales, 2019). Disinformation was a particular concern as candidates were also active in disseminating such content (Meléndez, 2020). An article published at Primero Noticias website stating that Bukele had a ‘D factor’, explaining that dark characteristics of his personality were widely shared. However, a great part of the publication was a copied from a BBC World article that had no reference to the candidate (Baires, 2019). Photomontages and false leaked messages were also observed (Baires, 2019). After Bukele took office, manipulation operations by his supporters and opponents have been observed. They are often the most active during specific events or crisis, such as payment scandals or discussions over security policies (Esberg, 2020). 129