Challenging Truth and Trust: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation

Tools such as bots, ‘fake news’, data harvesting, and micro-profiling are increasingly being used to manipulate public opinion, both by domestic and foreign actors. Increasingly, these tactics are leading to questions about whether social media threatens democracy.

This report sets out the growing use of this computational propaganda to spread misinformation and shape public discourse. The authors identify coordinated manipulation campaigns in 48 countries, including to spread disinformation during election campaigns, spread fake news over chat applications, and flood hashtags on social media. Moreover, they examine the wide array tools and strategies used by misinformation-spreading ‘cyber troops’ and identify a growing psychological operations industry. The report suggests that stronger rules and norms for the use of social media, big data and new information technologies during elections are needed to protect democracy.