Facebook pages associated with seven Uganda-based news websites were removed for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behaviour on 8 January, six days before the country’s presidential elections. Journalists, editors, and founders of the websites were included in the large network that Facebook linked to the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology’s Government Citizen Interaction Centre (GCIC). In total, the corresponding Facebook pages of the seven websites had more than 119,000 total followers.
Two of the linked websites, gorillanationug.com and pfu.co.ug, were inaccessible. Five of the other websites –
The Niles Wires,
, Kampala Times, Kampala Post, and
The Ugandan – presented as news websites. Three of these websites copied content directly from the official website of the governing party, National Resistance Movement (NRM), presenting the content as news. Opinion pieces that were vehemently anti-opposition leader Bobi Wine were also lifted, without at