Strategies, Tools, and Techniques The government uses Facebook and Twitter to generate support. During the citizens protests of 2015, a network of pro-government bots (JOHBots, as they would then be identified as) coordinated to amplify content (Garay, 2019). During the 2017 elections around a hundred clusters of rudimentary Twitter bots coordinated “to provide a positive social media fog in what turned out to be a violent post-electoral circumstance” (Gallagher et al., 2019). As analysed by Erin Gallagher (2018), groups of accounts share common characteristics. For instance, of the active accounts between 25 and 29 December 2017 that mentioned Juan Orlando Hernández, there was a group that used profile pictures of attractive women with cover photos and that were created on 10 or 17 June 2015. Their tweeting schedules are also similar: from 9 to 5 during weekdays. Other groups shared surnames, such as Santos or Rivera. In May 2019, Facebook announced that it had removed Facebook pages that were being used to “mislead others about who they are or what they are doing” and were managed by the firm Archimedes Group, a private Israeli firm (@DFRLab, 2019). The operations were being deployed in the content of the protests over health and education reforms. They were mostly used to spread content aimed at polarizing and driving division in Honduras, and targeted ads with pro-government and anti-opposition content. Some content, for instance, targeted former President and leader of the opposition, Zelaya, labelling him a drug consumer, or attacked deputy Olivia Zúniga Cáceres with misogynist messages (Garay, 2019). In July 2019, there was a new takedown announcement by Facebook. The company indicated that part of the activities was linked to social media managers of the government (Facebook, 2019). In early 2020, Twitter deleted 3,104 fake accounts attributed to the social media manager of Juan Orlando Hernández because they were undermining the public conversation. According to the company, their creation was traced to a single IP range in Honduras. A report by the Stanford Internet Observatory (Cryst & García Camargo, 2020) lists accounts of public institutions, such as that of the National Television Station, and television and media personalities, among the ones taken down. They were mostly pro-government messages, and the most recent accounts had an automated appearance both in the way they were created and in the content posted. Moreover, it is worth noting that the peaks of their date of creation were related to controversial events, such as the sanctioning of “the president’s re-election bid”, the results of the 2017 elections, and the drug trafficking trial of Tony Hernández, brother of the President (Cryst & García Camargo, 2020). Nevertheless, some accounts of intellectuals, artists, and left-wing activists critical to the government were also taken down. As suggest by the report of the Stanford Internet Observatory, this cluster might have coordinated activities, although more evidence is needed (Cryst & García Camargo, 2020). Table 2: Observed Strategies, Tools and Techniques of Social Media Manipulation in Honduras Account Types Messaging and Valence Communication Platforms Strategies Automated, Human Fake Pro-government, Attacks on Creation of disinformation, Twitter, Facebook opposition data-drive strategies, Amplification strategies Source: Authors’ evaluations based on data collected. Blank spaces indicate no evidence was found. 168