# Incident I00087: Challenging Truth and Trust: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation
* **Summary:** <i>“The manipulation of public opinion over social media platforms has emerged as a critical threat to public life. Around the world, a range of government agencies and political parties are exploiting social media platforms to spread junk news and disinformation, exercise censorship and control, and undermine trust in the media, public institutions, and science.<br><br> “At a time when news consumption is increasingly digital, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and “blackbox” algorithms are being leveraged to challenge truth and trust: the cornerstones of our democratic society.<br><br> “In 2017, the first Global Cyber Troops inventory shed light on the global organization of social media manipulation by government and political party actors.<br><br> “This 2018 report analyses the new trends of organized media manipulation, and the growing capacities, strategies and resources that support this phenomenon.”</i>
| [https://demtech.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2018/07/ct_appendix.pdf](https://demtech.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2018/07/ct_appendix.pdf) | 2018/08/08 | Samantha Bradshaw, Philip N. Howard | Computational Propaganda Research Project | [https://web.archive.org/web/20240621104749/https://demtech.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2018/07/ct_appendix.pdf](https://web.archive.org/web/20240621104749/https://demtech.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2018/07/ct_appendix.pdf) |
| Technique | Description given for this incident |
| --------- | ------------------------- |
| [T0097.101 Local Persona](../../generated_pages/techniques/T0097.101.md) | IT00000307 <i>“Another actor operating in China is the American-based company Devumi. Most of the Twitter accounts managed by Devumi resemble real people, and some are even associated with a kind of large-scale social identity theft. At least 55,000 of the accounts use the names, profile pictures, hometowns and other personal details of real Twitter users, including minors, according to The New York Times (Confessore et al., 2018)).”</i><br><br>In this example accounts impersonated real locals while spreading operation narratives (T0143.003: Impersonated Persona, T0097.101: Local Persona). The impersonation included stealing the legitimate accounts’ profile pictures (T0145.001: Copy Account Imagery). |
| [T0143.003 Impersonated Persona](../../generated_pages/techniques/T0143.003.md) | IT00000306 <i>“Another actor operating in China is the American-based company Devumi. Most of the Twitter accounts managed by Devumi resemble real people, and some are even associated with a kind of large-scale social identity theft. At least 55,000 of the accounts use the names, profile pictures, hometowns and other personal details of real Twitter users, including minors, according to The New York Times (Confessore et al., 2018)).”</i><br><br>In this example accounts impersonated real locals while spreading operation narratives (T0143.003: Impersonated Persona, T0097.101: Local Persona). The impersonation included stealing the legitimate accounts’ profile pictures (T0145.001: Copy Account Imagery). |
| [T0145.001 Copy Account Imagery](../../generated_pages/techniques/T0145.001.md) | IT00000303 <i>“In 2017, Tanya O'Carroll, a technology and human rights adviser for Amnesty International, published an investigation of the political impact of bots and trolls in Mexico (O’Carroll, 2017). An article by the BBC describes a video showing the operation of a "troll farm" in Mexico, where people were tweeting in support of Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI in 2012 (Martinez, 2018).<br><br>“According to a report published by El País, the main target of parties’ online strategies are young people, including 14 million new voters who are expected to play a decisive role in the outcome of the July 2018 election (Peinado et al., 2018). Thus, one of the strategies employed by these bots was the use of profile photos of attractive people from other countries (Soloff, 2017).”</i><br><br>In this example accounts copied the profile pictures of attractive people from other countries (T0145.001: Copy Account Imagery, T0145.006: Attractive Person Account Imagery). |
| [T0145.006 Attractive Person Account Imagery](../../generated_pages/techniques/T0145.006.md) | IT00000304 <i>“In 2017, Tanya O'Carroll, a technology and human rights adviser for Amnesty International, published an investigation of the political impact of bots and trolls in Mexico (O’Carroll, 2017). An article by the BBC describes a video showing the operation of a "troll farm" in Mexico, where people were tweeting in support of Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI in 2012 (Martinez, 2018).<br><br>“According to a report published by El País, the main target of parties’ online strategies are young people, including 14 million new voters who are expected to play a decisive role in the outcome of the July 2018 election (Peinado et al., 2018). Thus, one of the strategies employed by these bots was the use of profile photos of attractive people from other countries (Soloff, 2017).”</i><br><br>In this example accounts copied the profile pictures of attractive people from other countries (T0145.001: Copy Account Imagery, T0145.006: Attractive Person Account Imagery). |
