Evidence of organized social media manipulation campaigns which have taken place in 70 countries, up from 48 countries in 2018 and 28 countries in 2017.

A handful of sophisticated state actors use computational propaganda for foreign influence operations. Facebook and Twitter attributed foreign influence operations to seven countries (China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela) who have used these platforms to influence global audience

China’s new-found interest in aggressively using Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube should raise concerns for democracies

Around the world, go v ernment actors are using social media to manufactur e consensus, aut omate suppr ession, and undermine trust in the liberal international order.

manipulating public opinion

use computational propaganda for political purposes.

strategies, tools, and techniques of computational propaganda,

The use of computational propaganda to shape public attitudes via social media has become mainstream, extending far beyond the actions of a few bad actors. In an information environment characterized by high volumes of information and limited levels of user attention and trust, the tools and techniques of computational propaganda are becoming a common – and arguably essential – part of digital campaigning and public diplomacy.

As a result, we suggest that computational propaganda has become a ubiquitous and pervasive part of the digital information ecosystem.

(1) to suppress fundamental human rights; (2) to discredit political opposition; and (3) to drown out political dissent.

Although there is nothing necessarily new about propaganda, the affordances of social networking technologies – algorithms, automation, and big data – change the scale, scope, and precision of how information is transmitted in the digital age.

eam size estimates of 300,000-2,000,000 people working in local and regional offices