In the process of looking at tweets about #FalseFlag chemical attack conspiracy theories, we stumbled upon something unusual. Usually these claims are centered on Syria, but this one is about Ukraine. Source is a website called southfront(dot)org.
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
We downloaded tweets linking to southfront(dot)org, resulting in 4549 tweets from 1622 accounts over the last 10 days. Most are in English, but there's a noticeable Japanese presence as well.
Retweet network for tweets linking southfront(dot)org. Some familiar faces show up - @Ian56789 and friends put in a prominent appearance. @trappedsoldier, a Japanese-language Kremlin-sympathetic account we've previously encountered, also turns up.
(meta-thread describing the accounts in the network containing @Ian56789).
(previous thread on Russia Insider in which @trappedsoldier showed up)
Checking domain registration for southfront(dot)org turns up something interesting - both the domain registrar and the contact phone number are based in Russia.
Finally, here are the news sources most frequently linked from Twitter accounts that have shared southfront(dot)org content in the last 10 days. The majority are either Russian state media or Western right-wing conspiracy sites.
We didn't find an unusually high percentage of bots in the southfront data set, but there are some. Let's take a look at an interesting one. @DeportImmigrant is a retweet bot that likes to retweet anti-immigrant/refugee material and Russian media.
This chart shows the media sites most frequently linked in @DeportImmigrant's most recent 3200 tweets (almost all are retweets). Russian sources make up the lions' share, but anti-immigrant organization @VoiceOfEurope also has a sizable presence.
Despite the fact that @DeportImmigrant appears to be tweeting via the Twitter website, tweet activity is nonetheless round-the-clock, with the exception of an hour gap at the same time every day. There's one more thing. . .
We've seen this pattern before. @DeportImmigrant's schedule is almost identical to those of @ThisIsWhyTrump and @SuomiSanomat, which turned up in a previous analysis of Russia Insider. Both of those likewise appear to be automating the Twitter website.
Correction: the wrong figure is included in a previous tweet in this thread. Here are the correct media sources for @DeportImmigrant.
