Back in March 2018 we reversed engineered / identified just over 250 Twitter accnts of the 600 Russian influencer accts monitored by the German Marshall Fund at the #Hamilton68 dashboard. Over time we expanede this list and broke them into subcatgories dashboard.securingdemocracy.org
Without giving away too much part of the reverse engineering involved an oversight in how the @SecureDemocracy dashboard displayed its trending data. We reverse engineered enough accounts as seed accounts to then grow out the set over time. We are completely independent of @gmfus
Fast forward to 2day. We looked at the discussion of candidates within the Kremlin-aligned #Hamilton68 subset of accnts most focused on Russian Geopolitics. This wordcloud in first week of Feb. shows positive support to Bernie Sanders #Bernie2020 #elections2020 #nvcaucus
This subset of Kremlin-aligned #Hamilton68 accnts tends 2 avoid specific hashtags related 2 US politics. Thus seeing a significant presence of #Bernie2020 convinced us 2 look at all the candidates over the period of Jan 26 - Feb 10, document the sentiment and # of unique accounts
Note we are ONLY looking at hashtag use right now. The graph shows that discussions around Senator Sanders was overwhelmingly positive. 12 unique accounts were identified in the #hamilton68 subset and used these hashtags.
#BernieWonIA
#Bernie2020
#BernieWonIowa
#BernieWon
The graph shows that discussions around Rep. Tulsi Gabbard was overwhelmingly positive. 10 unique accounts were identified in the #hamilton68 subset and used these hashtags.
#StandWithTulsi
#Tulsi2020
#TulsiForPresident
#VoteForTulsi
The graph shows that discussions around former VP Joe Biden was overwhelmingly negative. 20 unique accounts were identified in the #hamilton68 subset and used these hashtags.
#biden
#biden2020
#joe2020
#BidenIsCorrupt
#neverBiden
#joebiden
The graph shows that discussions around Mayor Pete Buttigieg was overwhelmingly negative. 24 unique accnts were identified in the #hamilton68 subset & used alot of hashtags
#WineCaveCoup
#PetesBillionaires
#pete2020
#PeteButtigieg
#Buttigieg2020
#CIAPete
#NeverPete
#PeteTheCheat
Interestingly the negative discussions and attacks towards Mayor Pete Buttigieg started very recently. They seemed to ramp up around Feb 4th and spiked enough to show up in a wordcloud between Feb 7- Feb 9th. #hamilton68 #infosec #osint
The graph shows that discussions around Sen Elizabeth Warren was a mixed bag but mostly negative. 9 unique accnts were identified in #hamilton68 subset, some -, some + and some neutral and used example hashtags.
#warrenisasnake
#warren
#warren2020
#ElizabethWarren
#neverwarren
Only a couple of #hamilton68 subset accounts even mentioned Sen Amy Klobuchar or Andrew Yang with these hashtags and they were neutral in their discussions.
#Klobuchar
#amy
#Yang
#YangGang
We were asked 2 check #Bloomberg as well. Very little hashtag activity around Bloomberg so far. Only 4 #Hamilton68 accts from subset used these hashtags #MikeBloomberg #NeverBloomberg #StopAndFriskBloomberg #Bloomberg2020 Some discussions about #DNCrigging & Billionaire Oligarchs
An important footnote 2 this. Dont misinterpret the sizes of the bars as an indication of absolute strengths of the attacks or boosting. This is a small & recent time window that was analyzed. For ex. attacks in aggregate on Biden have been ongoing for months. For Buttigieg, days
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