Thread by @conspirator0

We started looking at the data set of tweets from banned Internet Research Agency accounts recently released by @FiveThirtyEight. This thread is intended as initial observations rather than exhaustive analysis.

https://twitter.com/FiveThirtyEight/status/1024428208891027456

In addition to a larger number of tweets (2973371 vs 203468), this dataset contains some information not in the set released by NBC - @FiveThirtyEight's team has classified them into several categories, and the follower counts at the time the tweets were captured is also present.

This chart shows the follower growth for several of the more prominent IRA troll accounts. Most were created (or at least started gaining followers) in late 2015 as the 2016 campaigns were getting underway - @JennAbrams was an outlier, having been active earlier.

Here's the tweet activity broken down into six of the categories identified by @fivethirtyeight ("non-English" and "other" are excluded.) Note that the "commercial" category is only prominent for three months, contradicting claims that the troll tweets were largely "clickbait"

We generally use retweet count to estimate audience/engagement for accounts and tweets. That metric is absent from the dataset, but we do have the number of followers each account had at the time of the tweets in question, so let's use that value instead.

This chart shows an estimate of the exposure each category received, calculated by aggregating the number of followers at the time of each tweet. The left and right-wing troll groups had similar tweet volume, but the right got far more attention (as did the news feed accounts.)

What did the accounts tweet about? These charts show the frequency of various terms in the right, left, and news feed categories. Immigration, terrorism, and Hillary Clinton are common themes on the right, while activist movements such as BLM and NoDAPL are prominent on the left.

Let's go back to this chart and look more closely at the spike in activity from the right-wing trolls in summer 2017.

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1025509567793430530

Zooming in, the right-wing Kremlin troll activity accelerated massively in the 15 days leading up to the 2017 #UniteTheRight rally. The sudden dropoff in activity is likely the result of several of the major accounts (including @TEN_GOP) being banned in late August.

Here are some examples of the IRA tweets related to the #UniteTheRight rally, drawn from a dataset of tweets containing the hashtag from last year. Of particular note are the early tweet from @lilaastrs and @TEN_GOP's retweet of 4chan's @polNewsInfinity the day before the rally.

(Old #UniteTheRight thread posted at the time of the 2017 event.)

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/896898631533547521

Updating this thread following a closer look at IRA troll account @TEN_GOP's involvement in the #UniteTheRight traffic. First, here's the retweet traffic for @polNewInfinity's #UniteTheRight tweet; it appears that @TEN_GOP gifted it with a second wave of attention.

Second, @TEN_GOP posted three #UniteTheRight tweets of its own on August 12th, 2017, the day of the rally. They highlight the chaos, were retweeted a combined total of 3310 times, and @bakedalaska even got his own shout-out. #AltWankers