Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
Data Scientist/Musician/Participant in the General Confusion @trutherbotprop Resist autocracy and research/counter disinformation. I serve the realm.

Nov 3, 2017, 21 tweets

The #UraniumOne hashtag (related to the bogus Clinton/Mueller/uranium) story has generated 328870 tweets in the last ten days.

High volume makes me suspect bot activity. I looked for repeated tweets, and found quite a few. 127 accounts tweeted this, for example.

Next I looked at the top 40 accounts (measured by number of RTs) driving the #UraniumOne traffic. @RealJamesWoods is the biggest source.

11 of the top 40 accounts are high profile right-wing Twitter users - everyone from Woods to @seanhannity to @JackPosobiec. #AltWankers

I'll pause here and share this study from Pew Research. Note the gender balance of voters in the 2016 election.
pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016…

Here are the 29 major pushers of #UraniumOne who aren't public figures. 24 (83%) have female avatars. Very different ratio than Trump's base

78671 (24%) of the tweets originated with one of these 29 accounts. I've dug into some before; will likely look at others in the future.

By way of example, here's a look at a network involving SparkleSoup45 and Pink_About_it from a previous thread.

Here's the #UraniumOne tweet volume again, this time broken down by the source of the tweets.

Finally, let's explore the propagation of the hashtag over the last 10 days. James Woods is the main node on 10/23. #AltWankers

Woods is the main influencer again on 10/24. Pink_About_it surfaces here - this was one of the main pushers of #ClintonRussiaCollusion.

10/25 features @DineshDSouza and @RepDeSantis joining the #UraniumOne fun. Yes, that's a US Representative pushing a propaganda hashtag.

The major influencers for 10/26 are similar to 10/25, but Woods and company are joined by a supporting cast of likely troll accounts.

SparkleSoup45 is a major node on 10/27 - like Pink_About_it, this account previously pushed #ClintonRussiaCollusion with the aid of bots.

Woods was apparently asleep on 10/28. Traffic is dominated by a mix of right-wing journalists and #AltWankers, w/help from probable trolls.

10/29-Woods resurfaces, but @USNJack (Posobiec alt account?) is the main node. A wide variety of anonymous supporting accounts on this day.

10/30 - @RealJamesWoods is once again the primary originator of #UraniumOne traffic. Note that the set of trolls varies from day to day.

10/31 - Similar to 10/31, but Woods is even more prominent, while the influence of the anonymous accounts has been reduced. #AltWankers

11/1 is the last full day I have data for. kwilli1046, an anonymous account with 75K tweets, joins Woods as the main source of traffic.

To be clear - I don't think James Woods is a "Russian bot". I think he's an asshat who's being amplified by trolls and bots. #AltWankers

I do think plenty of the trolls and bots in question are Kremlin-controlled, however :) #InformationWarfare

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