Massive anti-Russian ‘bot army’ exposed by Australian researcers

An Australian university has unearthed millions of Tweets by fake ‘bot’ accounts pushing disinformation on the Ukraine war.

by Peter Cronau

Part 4 - Critical tool in information warfare

This new research paper confirms mounting fears that social media has covertly become what the researchers call ‘a critical tool in information warfare playing a large role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine’.

The Adelaide University researchers tried their best to be noncommittal in describing the activities of the fake Twitter accounts, although they had found the vast majority – over 90 percent – were anti-Russian messages. They stated: ‘Both sides in the Ukrainian conflict use the online information environment to influence geopolitical dynamics and sway public opinion.’

They found the two main participating sides in the propaganda war have their own particular goals and style. ‘Russian social media pushes narratives around their motivation, and Ukrainian social media aims to foster and maintain external support from Western countries, as well as promote their military efforts while undermining the perception of the Russian military.’

While the research findings concentrated on automated Twitter bots, there were also findings on the use of hashtags by non-bot tweeters. They found significant information flows from non-bot pro-Russian accounts, but no significant flows from non-bot pro-Ukraine accounts.

As well as being far more active, the pro-Ukraine side was found to be far more advanced in its use of automated bots. The pro-Ukrainian side used more ‘astroturf bots’ than the pro-Russians. Astroturf bots are hyper-active political bots that continuously follow many other accounts to increase follower count of that account.

Source, links:

https://declassifiedaus.org/2022/11/03/strongmassive-anti-russian-bot-army-exposed-by-australian-researchers-strong/

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