Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation

Cyber troops are government, military or political party teams committed to manipulating public opinion over social media. This report summarises the findings of the first comprehensive inventory of the major organizations behind social media manipulation. It finds that cyber troops are a pervasive and global phenomenon.

In the report, authors Samantha Bradshaw and Philip N. Howard describe the specific organizations created, often with public money, to help define and manage what is in the best interest of the public. They compare such organizations across 28 countries, and inventory them according to the kinds of messages, valences and communication strategies used, and catalogue their organizational forms and evaluate their capacities in terms of budgets and staffing.