A  new report highlights the extent of social media manipulation around the world. Australia’s Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has warned that it would be foolish to think that Australia’s elections couldn’t be swayed by foreign interests. The report, carried out by researchers at the University of Oxford, revealed a sharp rise in organized social media manipulation campaigns, identifying examples in 48 countries, up from 28 countries last year.

The manipulation of public opinion over social media platforms has emerged as a critical threat to public life the report added. 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. The digitization of news media has led to the advent of tools capable of analyzing people’s news consumption and micro-target individuals with certain content without them, or others, realizing. Such processes are used for propaganda initiatives, as well as to both spread and combat fake news and disinformation.

Technologies like “artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and ‘black box’ algorithms are being leveraged to challenge truth and trust,” the report said.

The research looked at the level of cyber troop teams in different countries which the report defined as government or political party actors tasked with manipulating public opinion online, as well as the general level of resources spent to conduct research on social networks, or to combat misinformation.

It identified Australia as having a low capacity when it came to cyber troops, meaning fewer actors were trying to manipulate the news and information shared on social media (as well as the fight against manipulation) compared to a country like the US. It described a low cyber troop capacity as small teams that may be active during elections or referendums, but which then stop activity until the next election cycle.

The FBI is currently investigating Russia’s involvement in influencing the previous US presidential election, and Mr. Dreyfus said a similar thing could conceivably happen in Australia.

“It’s welcome that social media companies are working to ensure their platforms aren’t being used to covertly influence our democratic system. We’d be foolish to think what happened in the US couldn’t happen here,” he wrote on Twitter.