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How the Russian propaganda network works and coordinates on Twitter

2022-03-21 21:14:20Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

How the Russian propaganda network works and coordinates on Twitter

Olena Kurilo became the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Bloody and bandaged, the 53-year-old teacher said she could not believe what had happened to her and her city, Chuhuiv. Her photo with her head bandage and bloody face was on the front pages of newspapers worldwide.

During the following days, Russian government accounts on social media began posting a video claiming that Olena was not hurt at all.

"Excellent photos, by the way, they were all the news," the Russian broadcaster says. The video then alleges that Olena was photographed two days later, unharmed.

"A few days later, good for him, no scratches," the Russian propaganda video said.

This claim is baseless, the BBC has verified the photo as true, as has Reuters. Aggressive conspiracy theories like these are not uncommon on social media.

But what makes this conspiracy theory so strange is that it was distributed by an official Russian government Twitter account - the Russian Mission in Geneva. Two weeks later, the Twitter post is still live.

The Russian government has a large network of official Twitter accounts - the BBC found more than 100 of them. They vary from accounts representing missions, or foreign embassies, with several thousand followers, to those with more than a million followers. President Putin has his own account. Many of the accounts have been labelled as Russian government organizations by Twitter.

However, while many of these accounts have spread disinformation, Twitter treats them differently from Russian state media - such as RT or Sputnik.

On February 28, Twitter announced that it would prevent media linked to the Russian state from being acceptable for "reinforcement" - meaning they would not be recommended, reported, nor proposed other countries on Twitter. But Twitter has confirmed to the BBC that this policy does not include Russian government accounts.

Tim Graham, a social media analyst at the QUT Digital Media Research Centre in Australia, describes this as a "gap" in Twitter's moderation policies, which allows the Russian government to extract disinformation.

"It's certainly a weak point in defending Twitter against disinformation," he says.

Intrigued by this web of spiders of Russian government accounts, Mr. Graham - who specializes in analyzing coordinated activity on social media - decided to investigate further. He analyzed 75 Russian government Twitter profiles, which in total have more than 7 million followers. The accounts have received 30 million consents, have been retweeted 36 million times and have responded 4 million times.

Graham studies how each Twitter account has renewed one of the other 74 profiles within an hour. He revealed that the Kremlin's Twitter account network works together to renew and increase traffic. This practice is sometimes called "astroturfing" - when the owner of some accounts uses the profiles they control to retweet content and reinforce the reach.

"It's a coordinated retweet network," Graham says.

"They are using this as an engine to run their favorite narrative on Twitter and are succeeding," he adds.

Coordinated activity, using numerous accounts, is against Twitter rules.

"You cannot artificially reinforce conversations through the use of multiple accounts," the Twitter rules say.

But, Twitter doesn't treat all accounts equally. Tweets from the government and elected officials may have more freedom when it comes to moderation. The company says on its website that there may be a public interest in seeing tit-for-tats that would otherwise violate its rules.

However, the company does not treat official accounts differently when it comes to coordinated behavior - there is no exception in these cases.


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