The Economist - USA (2022-05-14)

TheEconomistMay14th 2022

Graphic detail War and social media

85

Under the radar

U

kraineandRussiaarefightingmain­

ly  in  eastern  Ukraine,  but  they  are

courting  allies  around  the  globe.  Ukraine

needs other countries to abide by Western

sanctions. That means winning hearts and

minds in places like India and Turkey.

To  Western  ears,  Russia’s  portrayal  of

Ukraine’s  leaders  as  Nazis  sounds  absurd.

But just as Ukraine’s military strength sur­

prised  the  Kremlin,  the  effectiveness  of

Russian propaganda might also be under­

estimated.  An  analysis  of  recent  Twitter

posts  suggests  that  Russia’s  online  infor­

mation operations may be focused outside

the West—and already bearing fruit.

To  measure  the  impact  of  Russia’s  on­

line  influencers,  we  studied  7,756  Twitter

accounts identified by casmTechnology, a

British analytics firm. All used the #IStand­

WithPutin or #IStandWithRussia hashtags

at least five timesinthewar’sfirst 12 days.

casmhas  divided  these  accounts  into

clusters (see diagram above). Each dot rep­

resents one user. Accounts that sent simi­

lar messages appear close together, where­

as  those  that  behaved  differently  are  far

apart. For example, accounts in South Afri­

ca often emphasised anti­colonial solidar­

ity, whereas many in South Asia focused on

Russia’s diplomatic support for India.

Such  groupings  leave  a  key  question

unanswered.  How  many  of  these  users

genuinely back Russia, and how many are

bots or paid trolls? To find out, we collected

3.7m  tweets  by  these  users  and  their  fol­

lowers,  and  produced  versions  in  English

using Google Translate. We then read 2,211

of these posts; classified them as support­

ing  Russia,  Ukraine  or  neither;  and  used

these data to train an algorithm, which ap­

plied these labels to all remaining tweets.

Next, we tried to work out which users

could  be  acting  on  behalf  of  the  Kremlin.

Nearly half of the accounts were no longer

accessible,  because  they  were  deleted,

made private or banned by Twitter. Of the

remainder,  an  estimated  7%  churned  out

pro­Russian  tweets  in  a  suspicious  man­

ner.  Some  were  created  early  in  the  war;

othersrarelymentionedRussiabeforeear­

ly March. Many acted in concert by posting

identical  messages.  Unlike  automated

bots,  most  of  these  accounts  varied  the

wording  and  emphasis  of  their  content.

This  supports  many  analysts’  hunch  that

real  people  are  being  paid  for  such  posts,

either by Russia or by its proxies.

The  suspicious  accounts  succeeded  in

injecting these views into online conversa­

tion.  On  average,  their  pro­Russian  mes­

sages  were  retweeted  61  times.  Moreover,

they  seem  to  be  winning  converts.  After

suspicious  accounts  posted  pro­Russian

content,  the  share  of  their  followers’

tweets favouring Russia also tended to rise.

In contrast, the suspicious accounts’ activ­

ity did not change in response to posts by

their followers or by users they followed.

Because this activity is concentrated in

Asian  and  African  online  networks,  it  is

largely invisible to Western Twitterati. But

if  countries  like  SouthAfricahelp  Russia

weather  the  sanctions,#IStandWithPutin

may be partly responsible.n

Russia is swaying Twitter users outside

the West to its side

Hindi

Farsi,Sindhi

andUrdu

Sub-Saharan

Afrcan

Sub-Saharan

Afrcan

South

African

South

African

Mix ofSouthAsian

Languages

MixofSouthAsian

languages

Tamil

IndianIndianEnglishEnglish

Multi-lingual;

heavilyspam

Similar accounts

are closer together

Dissimilaraccounts

arefurtherapart

→ Distinct clusters of pro-Russian Twitter accounts are active all across Asia and Africa

Similarity diagram of accounts tweeting pro-Russian hashtags*

March 7th-9th 2022

Pro-Russiatweets,%

44%Nowbannedordeleted

52%Notflaggedassuspicious

56%Stillactive Suspiciousaccounts4%

Estimatedbreakdownof,56Twitter

accountssharingpro-Russianhashtags

*Fiveormorementionsof#IStandWithPutinor#IStandWithRussia.Thediagramonlydepictsdistances.Left/right

andtop/bottompositionsarearbitrary Sources:CASMTechnology;Twitter;GoogleTranslate;TheEconomist

0

10

20

30

40

Feb 2022 Mar Apr

Russia

invades

Ukraine

Their followers

Suspicious accounts

“ The world’s greatest

imperialists, genocidal and

colonialists came together,

formed NATO and said ‘we

are good people’...This is the

EU and UN hypocrisy ”

“NATO has killed about

1,603,500 in Libya, Iraq,

Afghanistan and Syria, and

nobody was shocked until

now that Russia killed barely

00 Ukrainian soldiers”

“ Why didn’t #NATO listen to

warnings? Why didn’t they

have dialogue with #Russia

when #Putin proposed

solutions?”

“Reports: #Ukrainians

holding #Indians as hostage

& human shields in #Kharkiv

& #Kyiv. It’s a treacherous

conspiracy to derail #India

#Russian brotherhood”

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