Costa Rica By Simone Bunse LEAD University, Costa Rica and Georgetown University, USA Introduction Costa Rica is one of Latin America’s most stable democracies. It has a multi-party political system, holds elections every 4 years, and its media is free and independent. A small middle-income country with a population of 5 million people, it has a very high level of internet penetration (74% as of January 2020), with 73% of the population actively using social media (Kemp, 2020). The use of social media for electoral campaign purposes first became visible in 2010. Yet, it was still in its infancy. Parties did not have broad user databases2 and Facebook usership had just started growing (Global Stats, 2009). It was not until the 2014 election that presidential candidates and political parties integrated social media more prominently into their electoral communications. Nonetheless, most candidates lacked organized e-campaigning strategies (Cruz Romero, 2015). Out of the 5 main contending parties (National Liberation Party (PLN), Social Christian Union (PUSC), Citizen Action Party (PAC), Libertarian Movement (ML), and Broad Front (FA), only two (PLN and PAC) had online campaign strategies in 2014 (Cruz Romero, 2015). PAC is a newer, largely urban-based party. Its social media userbase had grown organically, from a much younger politically active audience who were already active on social media. PLN, in turn, is a much older and traditional party. Its older and more conservative base was slow to adopt social media. Thus, the PLN had to grow and organize usership to position its agenda on social media somewhat artificially.3 Their clumsy efforts were noted with disdain during the 2014 presidential debates, when the party tasked some of their members with commenting on social media platforms to support their candidate and criticize opponents.4 In 2016, Bloomberg journalists revealed that imprisoned Colombian hacker, Andrés Sepúlveda, had researched the opposition in Costa Rica in early 2013 (Robertson, Riley and Willis, 2016). PLN’s presidential candidate, Johnny Araya, admitted having had contacts with Miami-based political strategist Juan José Rendon, for whom Sepúlveda claimed to work. However, Araya denied hiring his firm or any of his associates during the election campaign (Cambronero, 2016). As a result of these revelations, Costa Rica’s far-left FA party, whose presidential candidate, José María Villalta, was leading the polls in December 2013 and eventually placed third, accused the PLN of cyber-espionage and asked the country’s electoral tribunal TSE to open an investigation. The TSE did so in 2016 but it archived the case in 2018, citing a lack of evidence.5 In this case it did not take sinister cyber troop activity to damage the credibility of Villalta.6 Alarmed by the polls, Costa Rica’s business community openly organized under the name “Costa Rican Alliance” (“Alianza Costa Rica”) to campaign against Villalta. It distributed printed material to companies that portrayed his policies as a threat to the business community, to employment, and to Costa Rica’s democracy (Agüero, 2014). Yet, by 2018 social media had become both an important strategic platform “to launch attacks and spread false information” during the election of that year (OAS, 2018), but also to oppose reforms by the incoming government and polarize society. This report analyzes “cyber troop” 85