KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysia has been identified as a country with “medium cyber troop capacity”, according to a University of Oxford research report on social media manipulation.
The study by the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), titled “Industrialised Disinformation: 2020 Global Inventory of Organised Social Media Manipulation”, placed Malaysia alongside North Korea, Nigeria, Cuba, Libya, Taiwan, South Korea and Yemen, among others.
It also placed Malaysia alongside its neighbours Thailand and Indonesia.
The study, conducted by researchers Samantha Bradshaw, Hannah Bailey and Philip N. Howard, noted that Malaysia is among the countries that have teams with a much more consistent form and strategy on cyber troopers.
These full-time staff are employed year-round to control the information space.
“These medium-capacity teams often coordinate with multiple actor types, and experiment with a wide variety of tools and strategies for social media manipulation,” said the study.
“Some medium-capacity teams conduct influence operations abroad.”
Malaysia was found to have prevalently used bots and humans to run fake accounts, while on political “messaging and valence”, it checked all the boxes for the “pro-government”, “attack opposition”, “distracting”, “suppressing” and “polarisation” elements mentioned in table three of the study.
As for “communications strategies”, Malaysia ticked the boxes for “disinformation”, “data-driven strategies”, “trolling” and “amplifying content”.
However, “mass reporting” is not part of the communication strategy of disinformation in the country, said the study.
In terms of “organisation form and prevalence of social media manipulation”, Malaysia has a presence in all five sectors listed, namely government agencies; politicians and parties; private contractors; civil society organisations; and, citizens and influencers.
“Over the past four years, we have monitored the global organisation of social media manipulation by governments and political parties, and the various private companies and other organisations they work with to spread disinformation,” said the report summary.
The researchers said the report highlighted the recent trends in computational propaganda across 81 countries, and “the evolving tools, capacities, strategies and resources used to manipulate public opinion around the globe”.
“Cyber-troop activity continues to increase around the world. This year (2020), we found evidence of 81 countries using social media to spread computational propaganda and disinformation about politics.”
OII director Prof Philip Howard said the report showed that disinformation has become more professionalised and produced at an industrial scale.
“Now, more than ever, the public needs to be able to rely on trustworthy information about government policy and activity.
“Social media companies need to raise their game by increasing their efforts to flag misinformation and close fake accounts without the need for government intervention, so the public has access to high-quality information.”
The report found that the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia are among the worst perpetrators of social media manipulation campaigns.
It also raised the alarm over the increasing number of social media manipulation campaigns, from 70 countries in 2019 to the 81 identified last year. – The Vibes, January 14, 2021
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