Caroline Orr Bueno
Here’s the story of how a 37-follower Twitter account seeded a propaganda narrative about Hawaii that made headlines around the world, thanks to a network of right-wing influencers — and amplification by both Russian and Chinese state media.
My latest — a very deep dive into a coordinated campaign:
#socialmedia #disinformation #propaganda
https://open.substack.com/pub/weaponizedspaces/p/russia-amplifies-right-wing-influence?r=1aupz&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Caroline Orr Bueno
I first noted this campaign on Twitter a week ago, when I saw an unusual number of tweets not just expressing the same idea, but using the same specific phrase (“fund Hawaii not Ukraine”) to do so. So I decided to look into it.
While I was doing that, right-wing media picked up the narrative…. Then Russian state media started amplifying it… And then a few days later, Chinese state media joined in, too.
At that point, I knew I was looking at something interesting…
Caroline Orr Bueno
To figure out what was going on, I looked at a sample of 200 tweets using that phrase, and also purposively sampled the earliest tweets using that phrase to study its origins.
Immediately, the timing of the first 4 tweets using that phrase stood out to me. They were spaced out almost exactly an hour apart, nearly to the minute.
The jump from the 1st account, w/ 37 followers, to the 2nd account w/ 51,000+, to the 3rd — a GOP candidate for Atty General w/ 217,000+ followers — was eye-popping.
Caroline Orr Bueno
Then Russian state media started amplifying the (now multiple) narratives. Russia is quite effective at identifying and exploiting existing tensions and divisions in the U.S. and other Western nations, as well as selling isolationism to democratic societies by laundering Russian propaganda through western voices.
That’s what RT did here — employing a blend of information- and belief-laundering, with Ron Paul serving as the mouthpiece for their own anti-Ukraine propaganda.
Caroline Orr Bueno
After analyzing the sample of 200 tweets, I found a lot of indicators of coordination and possible inauthentic activity, including repetition of text, imagery, & video — with one particular video appearing in at least 10% of sampled tweets/QT’s —as well as recycled content from previous fires, and from previous disinformation campaigns surrounding “directed energy weapons.”
Information laundering and recycling is extremely common in disinformation campaigns.
Caroline Orr Bueno
Several temporal trends also emerged as possible indicators of inauthentic/coordinated activity, including the spacing of the initial tweets & the time frames for subsequent tweets, with a disproportionate number of tweets posted during certain blocks of time (eg, 8-10pm)
The accounts also engaged in a lot of co-tweeting & co-retweeting — a pattern that is present in **74% of influence campaigns.**
Caroline Orr Bueno
Before long, a talking point seeded by a 37-follower account was picked up and blasted across the headlines by right-wing media & fringe-“left” media, becoming the dominant narrative among mainstream & fringe media outlets alike.
(My personal assessment is that the initial account is part of an influence network, and the account’s activity serves as a sort of flag or traffic sign for others in the network. This is common in political “war rooms.”)
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