Table 2: Observed Strategies, Tools and Techniques of Social Media Manipulation in Kazakhstan Account Types Messaging and Valence Content and Platforms Communication Strategies Human, Fake Pro-Government, Attacking Opposition, Distracting Messages, Trolling, Polarising Comments on Kazakh news Facebook, sites, Facebook and Instagram, Instagram, Mass reporting of WhatsApp, content Telegram, VKontakte Source: Authors’ evaluations based on data collected. Blank spaces indicate no evidence was found. Organizational Capacity and Resources The Eurasian Institute for Integration receives state grants for research, which is then funnelled into the bot farms. Workers are alleged to receive a monthly salary of between 50-100 thousand tenge ($130-260) (ACCA, 2020a). Table 3: Cyber Troop Capacity in Kazakhstan Team Size Resources Spent Activity Levels (USD) ~150 Coordination Capacity Measure Low/Medium Social media is used by the population to organise against the regime. This was seen during the demonstrations in 2019, with the use of the hashtags #qazaqkoktemi (Kazakh Spring) and #menoyandim (I’ve woken up). A movement called ‘Wake Up, Qazaqstan’ emerged, calling for democratic reforms (Lillis, 2019). The hashtag #уменяестьвыбор (‘I have a choice’) began circulating on social media, with students gathering and staging protests under the hashtag #seruen (‘a walk’) – as activists claimed they could not be detained for walking (Abdurasulov, 2019). Given the lack of funding, Amirzhan Kosanov, opposition candidate in the 2019 presidential election, used social media such as WhatsApp to organise his campaign and received a surprisingly high 16% of the vote. Given the potential power of social media for activism, it was reported that in December 2018 the government had purchased a $4.3 million automated tool to track political discontent on social media, using deep learning that detects content discrediting the regime (Freedom House, 2019). References Abdurasulov, A. (2019, June 7). The rare protests in a country that bans dissent. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48545166 ACCA. (2020a, February 13). Who is behind the secret bot farms in Kazakhstan? ACCA. https://acca.media/en/who-is-behind-the-secret-bot-farms-in-kazakhstan/ ACCA. (2020b, February 21). Bot farms of Kazakhstan rebelled against ACCA. ACCA. https://acca.media/en/bot-farms-of-kazakhstan-rebelled-against-acca/ ACCA. (2020c, March 7). Bot farms in Kazakhstan (sequel). ACCA. https://acca.media/en/bot-farms-in-kazakhstan-sequel/ BBC. (2020, February 9). Ethnic clashes in Kazakhstan kill 10. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51425938 225