Thread by @benimmo

Thread: Interesting to look at online traffic on #MH17 over the past day and a half.

Hamilton68 shows that it's the top theme being discussed in the Kremlin, pro-Kremlin and fellow-traveller spheres.

But it doesn't look like the message is getting through...

This is a @sysomos scan of traffic on MH17 since yesterday morning.

Almost 150,000 tweets.

First spike: JIT naming the 53rd Brigade as the source of the missile.

Second spike: NL and Aus holding Russia responsible.

These are the ten most-retweeted tweets.

Dominated by breaking news and factual reporting, such as @RFERL, @BBCBreaking, @SpectatorIndex.

Further down into the top 50, traffic's still dominated by voices such as @Kasparov63, @ASLuhn and @ShaunWalker7.

And these less than flattering ones from @DarthPutinKGB and @NATOhawks.

One of the early Russian responses was that the JIT conclusions were a fake.

Search for "MH17 + fake" only returned 352 results.

... and even there, the best-performing tweets came from the likes of @AricToler, @Lucian_Kim and @IlvesToomas.

One favourite troll tactic is to denounce @Bellingcat as "Bellingcrap," because playground insults are so convincing.

Total traffic on "MH17 + Bellingcrap" since yesterday morning: 83 mentions, including retweets.

Or an average of almost exactly two per hour.

Not much...

How about in Russian?

Well, there's much less traffic.

Search "MH17 + Боинг" gives 4,811 results.

Search "MH17 + Бук" gives 8,640.

The most-retweeted posts aren't exactly favourable to the Kremlin narrative, either.

RT and Sputnik are doing their best to amplify the Kremlin's point of view.

Not really surprising: that's their job.

"Securing the national interests of the Russian Federation in the information sphere," as Sputnik's charter puts it.

Not getting huge traction, though.

The usual voices are defending the Kremlin line, but it doesn't look like they're getting much traction. Not enough to break out of the echo chamber.

And of course, there had to be an attack on the evidence, because: social media.

Told you that one was coming.

One final note: I searched for mentions of MH17 + the handles of Bellingcat, RT and Sputnik since yesterday morning.

Almost exactly 10x more Bellingcat mentions than RT ones.

Evidence counts. / Thread ends.