Thread by @dfreelon

Stand back everyone, I'm gonna present some exploratory data analysis. Responses welcome.

You may have seen the recent rash of carbon-copy tweets claiming a Biden-related divorce and emigration. (examples here:

https://twitter.com/AlisonAgosti/status/1328208054614036482

).

Claims have been circulating about possible bot and foreign disinformation activity, so I wanted to see what the data show.

Step 1: Download tweets from Twitter's Search API containing the first ten words of the tweet. This yielded 1,509 tweets covering a little over a week. (This excludes anything deleted in the last week.)

Step 2: Plot tweets per hour. The big spikes on 11/9 and 11/16 are possible indicators of coordination, though not definitive.

Step 3: Tally top tweeting users. It's clear that many users tweeted this message multiple times, which may imply a disinformation-like objective.

Interestingly, some of these users appear to be Russian-style political sockpuppets, while others mostly tweet about soccer or K-pop. Anyone have any idea what's going on here?

Step 4: Tally most-mentioned users. Lots of political operators here, although I question the logic of aiming an obvious chain letter at them?

Step 5: Plot account creation dates. Although many accounts were created in the past few months, many have been around for much longer. This suggests some may not be influence operators.

Step 6: Plot top emigration destinations. Interesting that English is only the primary language in two locations, one of which is Alaska (clearly a joke).

So my main conclusion is that some of this likely was disinformation, but some may have been real people jumping in as a joke. It's not always easy to tell the difference.

If you have suggestions for other analyses to run, let me know and I'll do them if they're simple enough. Also any alternative interpretations are welcome!

The most interesting finding here might be the thin line between disinfo and viral internet jokes. Major research implications in both areas

Anyone know of research on real accounts that are hacked and later become bots? I've only heard anecdotes; curious whether it's a systematic tactic...