dr. samuel wooley.seeing these manipulations have it on social media across countries more and more ever since the 2016 election. how are these tactics evolving? samuel: whereas before we saw basic animated bots, now they are being used to amplify attacks, not just in the united states but all around the world. arguably it has been happening for quite some time. selina: there were reports that jamal khashoggi was just one of many influential voices that was targeted by the saudi ring government sponsored troll farm. what do you make of that and how widespread are these? samuel: we found that state-sponsored trolling spreads all around the world. governments from turkey to saudi arabia but also within south america and southeast asia are making use of state-sponsored trolling as the mechanism to target journalists, basically to stop people reporting. it is a real strike to democracy when basically twitter and facebook, which were heralded as platforms of free speech, are being co-opted by government cont