‘Cyber troops’ manipulate Facebook, Twitter

Governments around the world are enlisting “cyber troops” who manipulate Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets to steer public opinion, spread misinformation and undermine critics, according to a new report from the University of Oxford.

Adding to growing evidence of government-sponsored efforts to use online tools to influence politics, re- searchers found 29 countries using social media to shape opinion domestically or with foreign audiences. The tactics are deployed by authoritarian regimes, but also democratically-elected governments.

“Social media makes propaganda campaigns much stronger and potentially more effective than in the past,” said Samantha Bradshaw, the report’s lead author and a researcher at Oxford’s Computational Propaganda Re- search Project. Online behaviour of the government-backed groups varies widely, from commenting on Facebook and Twitter posts, to targeting people individually. Journalists are harassed by government groups in Mexico and Russia, while cyber troops in Saudi Arabia flood negative Twitter posts about the regime with unrelated content to make it harder for people to find the offending post. In the Czech Republic, the Government is more likely to post a fact-check response to something seen as inaccurate. In Serbia, fake accounts are used to promote the Government’s agenda, and bloggers in Vietnam spread favourable information. Government actors in Argentina, Mexico, the Philippines, Russia, Turkey, Venezuela and elsewhere use automation software to spread social media posts like human users.