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[Thread] 1) @Nigel_Farage, as hothead-in-chief, deserves a Twitter analysis. So I analysed a recent Tweet of his which has about 6,500 Retweets. The tweet in question is the one where Farage is obviously playing two truths and a lie [see screenshot]. #ٍStopTheCoup #Brexit 
2) Why did I choose this tweet? It's because we are interested in what messages get amplified the most. So I downloaded Farage's TL to see which was the most retweeted. Twas the aforementioned ofc! The graph shows Nigel's recent RTs by number over time #StopTheCoup
3) As before, I will examine the biographical details of those who retweeted this tweet. A count of the most common words reveals that the most common biographical detail of those who amplified this tweet is MAGA, followed by Trump, followed by Brexit [See below]. #StopTheCoup
4) You will also notice that a lot of the top hits for most common words include a smorgasbord of Trump and/or alt-right related terms, from WGA, KAG etc. As is usual, the terms 'Christian' and 'married' comes up a lot. What about Islam, I hear you ask?
5) No prizes for guessing, virtually everyone who mentions Islam (about 24 people) in their biography who retweeted this #Farage tweet is against it. My favourite, 'deplores Islam and the far left. Retired Nuke Chemist'. #Islamophobia #StoptheCoup
6) Some of you have asked why terms like 'pro', 'anti-', 'love', 'hate' etc appear a lot. These are common antonyms and binaries, which in a polarized world make sense - or make sense if you are trying to promote polarization. You often see phrases like "pro Europe, anti EU"
7) As we can see from the below graph, which shows when people in the sample created their Twitter account, we see the same spike on January 2017. These are mostly MAGA accounts. There is another spike in August 2019, which means a lot of people signed up recently to give ol'
8) Nige's tweet a boost. This is not necessarily unusual, i.e. young lings could be flocking to Twitter due to all the #Brexit chaos, but it is also characteristic of inauthentic behaviour to see spikes in recent bot or troll accounts more recently. They are often set up and
9) then removed by Twitter. However, usually they have served their purpose by the time they are removed. Indeed, they might not have burned long, but they burned brightly. #StopTheCoup
I hear a voice from the back ask 'so what percentage of retweets with bios have Trump-Alt-right related terms such as KAG Trump WWG1WGA MAGA QANON?'. Well I am glad you asked. It's a whopping 23%, or 1,070 of the 4549 or so accounts that retweeted. Almost a quarter!
For comparison, about 719 accounts contained either #Brexit, Farage, Tommy (Robinson), and LeaveMeansLeave. That would mean that those who like to self-identify on Twitter with Trump-related notions are a larger cohesive or identifiable community for this retweet of Farage
12- I think) Unsurprisingly, the Trump community are more vocal historically than the Brexit community. If you add up the cumulative past statuses (e..g number of tweets posted by any account). The Trump community comes to around 80,000,000 - the Brexit community 20,000,000
Sure Americans are chatty, but this could also mean that those accounts are more spammy, botty, or trolly. Often an account that posts a lot will be flagged as suspicious. Afterall, who has time to tweet that much apart from robots or paid trolls... #StopTheCoup
14) But the big question remains (pun actually unintended, for once). Can we make a determination if these Twitter accounts are bots, trolls, Americans, Brits. If they are real, the analysis is still interesting. Indeed, if we assume that they are real then at least we could say
15) that people who aren't British are playing an active role in amplifying the online discourse advocating a hard #Brexit. In an age of globalization and rising populism, this is hardly surprising, but when it comes to election integrity, it can be disconcerting. #StopTheCoup
16) On the other hand, there has been proven interference in Twitter by Russian, Iranian, Mexican, and Saudi trolls. Check this piece from @DFRLab - they analysed an archive of troll accounts suspended by Twitter. They found Russian trolls interfering on issues ranging
17) from #Brexit, to the US election, to #BlackLivesMatter . Importantly, trolls play both sides 'of divisive issues'. I.e. you get Russian trolls for AND against Brexit. The point is to polarize & divide, which is why you may see so much binary language medium.com/dfrlab/trolltr…
18) Theoretically this is because polarization is more likely to lead to some form of social conflict and problems...
19) As the last few days have shown, this community of MAGA accounts has been promoting a hard Brexit, a coup in Iran, and the departure of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. They are sewing divisionw on a multiple of international issues. #cdnpoli #StoptheCoup
20) Anyway, while we do not know the quantity of trolls or bots operating on the MAGA continuum, I am suggesting a lot of this activity is inorganic. To highlight this point, I will go through my data quickly to locate a suspected bot. *Gimme a sec*....
21) And as I hear faint cries of 'remoaner' and 'libtard', I am actually going to delve into a dataset of people who have #BlackLivesMatter in their biography... Bear with me.
22) PC just froze will be with you soon
23) Ok, so I went into my #BlackLivesMatter dataset. (about 49000) accounts. Searched for the account with the most statuses. As you can see, it's someone called Crislex aka 'Musty Strawberry'. She has almost 900,000 statuses *gasp* and 10,858 followers. Now let's check Twitter..
24) Uh oh, surprise surprise, the account has been suspended - after deploying a whopping 900,000 tweets....
25) Annnddd Crislex set up another account, called Criiislex . Same account ID. She even comments at being suspended at 10,800 followers. So if indeed she/he is a Russian bot, or an actual musty strawberry, it just highlights how easy it is to set up another Twitter account
26) So there you have it folks. MAGA trolls and Americans made up around a quarter of @Nigel_Farage's recent Brexit tweet. They are the most supportive of Farage. Also, we found a probable bot/troll Have a nice a day. Will answer questions as they come. #StopTheCoup
