NDM 16

Thirty countries use 'armies of opinion shapers' to manipulate democracy – report- The Guardian

The article talks about governments of over 30 countries around the globe  using armies of 'opinion shapers' to meddle in elections, advance anti-democratic agendas and repress their citizens, a new report from US NGO Freedom House. 

• Of the 65 countries surveyed, 30, including Venezuela, the Philippines and Turkey, were found to be using “armies of opinion shapers” to “spread government views, drive particular agendas, and counter government critics on social media” -  Freedom House’s new Freedom on the Net report

•  In 2016, just 23 countries were found to be using the same sort of pro-government “astroturfing” (a fake grassroots movement).

•  In the Philippines, it is manifested as a “keyboard army” paid $10 a day to operate fake social media accounts, which supported Rodrigo Duterte in the run-up to his election last year, and backed his crackdown on the drug trade this year.

• Turkey’s ruling party enlisted 6,000 people to manipulate discussions, drive agendas and counter opponents. 

• Sudan’s governments approach is more direct: a unit within the country’s intelligence service created fake accounts to fabricate support for government policies and denounce critical journalists.

From the article, I can see that from the survey done by the Freedom House found that many countries themselves create accounts which all hold views and thoughts which would be beneficial to the party/government which would want to introduce their views. However, the article highlights countries who did not hold an election such as Turkey or Venezuela, social media manipulation was still frequent. The Freedom House's Net Report  made the statement that “strong indications that individuals are paid to distort the digital information landscape in the government’s favour, without acknowledging sponsorship”. This statement really brings to light that governments having the ability to access certain accounts or sites will be able to skew their specific audiences own political views to fit theirs. This is evident in Trumps promoter stating that targeting specific people through Facebook data ,given to them, was how Trump won the election. 

• Governments are now using social media to suppress dissent and advance an anti-democratic agenda

Not only is this manipulation difficult to detect on the sites, it is more difficult for people such as the director of FH to combat than other types of censorship, such as website blocking, because it’s dispersed and because of the huge number of people and bots deployed to do it. In the Philippines, they made a “keyboard army” and paid $10 a day to people to operate fake social media accounts supporting a Philippine politician in his election. 

The difficulty is evident and can be hard to track and represents the extent of power institutions/ government have over audiences and even can be done on sites which people would see as free and private but are also being targeted themselves.