Open influence campaigns by foreign governments are really hard. Not surprising. But we have the data to back this up. Based on analysis of this tweet by US president @realDonaldTrump (Thread)
First the facts. Crime rates are actually falling in Germany. So we have classified @realDonaldTrump Tweet as fabricated content - a completely made up story without any basis in fact (1) spiegel.de/panorama/justi…
Using the methodology @snv_berlin jointly developed with @unicepta_news we analyzed how German online and social media reacted to this tweet (2)
Usually #fakenews have much higher levels of engagement on social media than the efforts to debunk the disinformation. (3)
But in the case of Trump's tweet. 78% of the total German social media engagement debunked @realDonaldTrump's disinformation - only 6% amplified it. (4) 
Regarding those accounts which spread the disinformation, we saw a pattern familiar to us from our previous #fakenews studies. Rightwing populists from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) leading the charge. (6)
Trump's tweet was probably crafted for his domestic audience. But if had any intent using the tweet to increase pressure on chancellor Merkel, he failed. What he achieved though was to further damage his credibility with German audiences (7)
And the German chancellor certainly perceived the tweet as what it was. An attack directly directed at her. (8)
Finally hat tip to Wolf-Dieter Rühl of @unicepta_news and @alexkaterdemos & @seabassberlin of @snv_berlin for the analysis (end)
