On 10-11 July the Council of Europe supported the State Audit Office of Georgia to train its Political Finance Monitoring Department and Public Relations Division staff on monitoring political activity in social media.

The Council of Europe national consultants developed training materials and steered two half-day sessions. The training provided participants with a general knowledge on trends in social media advertising and prepared them with practical tools to engage in relevant monitoring, focusing particularly on the following topics: social media algorithms; proper use of Facebook search tool; investigating targeted pages and their followers; analysing advertising history; sponsoring pages and/or posts; ways to disseminate the sponsored content.

The training was organised within the frame of the Council of Europe project “Reform of the Electoral Practice in Georgia”.