Thread by @timothyjgraham

Following up this analysis, even though @CraigKellyMP only sent 114 (0.001%) of the anti-lockdown campaign tweets, he received a whopping:

- 28% of all likes
- 25% of all replies
- 26% of all quoted retweets.

This diagram shows the top accounts by engagement metrics 🧵

https://twitter.com/timothyjgraham/status/1444916456202801154

But when it comes to retweets, Kelly's metrics are overshadowed by the amplification efforts of a coordinated network of fringe protestor accounts, as this chart shows:

We see that Kelly doesn't appear in the coordinated behaviour network (see original tweet above). Rather, his tweets frame the agenda and injects a massive amount of fuel into the Twitter protest networks *but* he doesn't coordinate his activity with them.

Looking at the creation dates of accounts tweeting these hashtags, yet again we see a very high concentration of newly created accounts. This tree map shows that most accounts are created in the past couple of months. One-fifth of all accounts were created this year.

In itself this is not necessarily suspicious as many people may have joined Twitter during the pandemic. *But* these results do echo the findings of our previous work, where newly created accounts were associated with suspicious platform manipulation:
theconversation.com/istandwithdan-…

In short: we have @CraigKellyMP, a politician funded by the taxpayer, demonstrably turbocharging and framing the agenda for a coordinated network of anti-lockdown and anti-government Twitter accounts, many of which are anonymous and created recently.

*by engagement metrics

I hope this analysis is of benefit to the community. As always, if anyone would like tweet IDs or details of methodology, please DM!

Data collected using 'twarc2': twarc-project.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Postscript: the pro-Andrews activists, led by @PRGuy17, managed to get their own hashtag into the #1 spot in only 25 minutes