🧵1/I have done an analysis of those responding to #NazaninZaghariRatcliffe's interview, specifically focusing on those calling her an 'ungrateful cow' for not showing enough deference or gratitude to the UK government. The Brexit partisanship on the topic is startling. Read on!
2/ First up. Accusations that Nazanin was 'ungrateful' started surfacing following her press conference that went viral on Twitter yesterday. She was calm and assertive, as was her husband Richard. Watch the video here
3/ I analysed around 14,000 tweets involving around 8600 unique accounts. I downloaded tweets that included the hashtag "send her back" and "ungrateful cow" and the keywords "Nazanin and ungrateful". (horrendous I know). The below network graph of tweets was generated
4/ Now bear in mind such searches return tweets hating on Nazanin as well as those supporting her/ criticizing the haters. As the graph below shows, there are two distinct clusters, 1 and 2.
Cluster 1 are those defending Nazanin
Cluster 2 are those criticizing Nazanin
5/ Now what can we say about each group. Well, if we analyse the bios of group 2, the haters, we find that the third most common descriptor is Brexit. If we check the concordance, they are pro-Brexit. Woke comes in 6th! (as in, anti-woke) EU is mentioned in 12, (as in anti-EU).
6/ Brexiteer and conservative come in 11th and 12. Back Boris is also in 15th. So a very distinctly pro-Brexit and conservative community are generally the ones labelling Nazanin as ungrateful on Twitter.
What about group 1? Well let's see...
7/ FBPE (Follow back pro EU) is in 4th place, with 'socialist' in 5th. Brexit is 6th, but concordance shows it's all pro-EU. 'Johnson Out' is in 7th place. So those defending Nazanin are indeed, more likely to to be pro-EU and left-leaning!
8/ As for the 'ungrateful cow' crowd. Here are a few of the most influential people on the hashtag accusing Nazanin of being an 'ungrateful cow'. Note the gratuitous use of caps, misogyny, and general unpleasantness. #NazaninZaghariRatcliffe
9/ So there you have it, proof that hating on a newly released hostage of the Iranian regime - who also happens to be a female person of colour, who has missed 6 years of their life and daughter growing up & endured hellish jail conditions - is more a right-wing Twitter past time
10/ Also proof that those who are pro-EU and left-leaning tend to be the ones exhibiting more empathy in the case of Nazanin. How many of those people are real is a different question, & one that I will not try to answer right now. Twitter is awash with anonymous generic accounts
11/ Some may ask about the cluster in the middle - well it's @JuliaHB1 - who actually features in the middle of the map between the two communities. While saying that Nazanin 'moaned', Julia also did say she would have punched someone if she was Nazanin.
special thanks to @rosieniven for bringing this issue to my attention!
12/ I will update keywords later but interesting to see who else is involved. Brexit campaign-funder and Putin apologist @Arron_banks has been joining the pile on casting aspersions on #NazaninZaghariRatcliffe - and getting a lot of engagement
13/ Update: Dunno if it's because of this thread but one of the largest infuencers of the anti Nazanin discourse was suspended in the past few hours #NazaninZaghariRatcliffe
14/ For those asking how I did this analysis. I downloaded the tweets using import function on NodeXL, exported that to a GEXF file, and then visualised it using Gephi. AntConc was used for corpus analysis. Of course there is a little more to it but they're the main bases.
15/ For anyone asking about clusters and communities (colours). The algorithm sorts out clusters based on connected edges (the lines, which represent tweets,RTs, replies etc). So what this graph indicates is polarisation, a lack of interaction across opposing communities on the
topic. Essentially it reflects how Twitter interactions across this particular issue reflect partisan echo Chambers. it's also important to bear in mind most twitter discussions consist of RTs. So most interactions within a sample are retweets
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🚨🧵1/ Graph showing people on X sharing the 'Haitians' or 'Immigrants' are eating pets xenophobic and/or racist disinfo. @elonmusk gets the most engagement by far on the topic, but @jdvance @stillgray @Surabees @tedcruz @charliekirk11 @endwokeness & @bennyjohnson get a lot
2/ Here's a list of the accounts who got the most impressions. I counted a minimum of 399,984, 065 impressions - and I was only downloading tweets with a minimum engagement of 50 retweets - so the real figure is higher.
3/ Another horrible outcome of this is that we now have to endure disturbing and racist memes of Trump abducting kittens (presumably to eat). Even Musk shared one, along with several tweets on the topic - supercharging the disinfo
🧵1/ Thought I'd zoom in on the data from the Southport riots, especially given the recent arrest of a man in Pakistan - which has prompted some commentators & news outlets to use it as an opportunity to target people of colour once again. Let's look at what happened
2/ A man in Pakistan, Farhan Asif, who ran Channel3NowNews, was just arrested for spreading misinfo. Channel3NowNews used the made-up name "Ali Al Shakati," However, contrary to some right-wing i/allusions, Channel3NowNews was NOT the first to tweet this name, or be arrested
3/ The first known person to post the name "Ali Al Shakati" on X was actually Artemisfornow, aka Bernie Spofforth, a wealthy woman from Cheshire. She tweeted the name over an hour before Channel3NowNews. She was arrested over a week ago, and released on bail.
🚨Important thread highlights how X under Musk is putting people at risk
1) This account impersonating a man who helped stop a knife attack in London is still live, & has accumulated well over 1 million impressions.
2) It's history indicates it is a pro-Putin "bot" connected
possibly to Pakistan. However, it also has pro-Ismail Haniyeh & Hamas content
3) Regardless of what you think of Hamas, this is far right rocket fuel. Tommy Robinson already tweeted out the fake account, wrongly accusing him of supporting an "islamist genocidal regime"
4) Despite Musk claiming he would clamp down on impersonator accounts this account has not been suspended yet. This is happening amidst a wave of anti -immigrant and anti-muslim violence in the UK.
🧵🚨This account @abdullahfromuk is impersonating a man who stopped a knife attack in London's Leicester Square. His original account handle was ZartashaPti and he has been tweeting pro-Imran Khan content in Urdu and English for most of his account history.
It has also tweeted content that would suggest it's pro-Vladimir Putin (although not in any particularly sophisticated way). The account is in the process of deleting its tweets, and it looks like a classic sockpuppet farm, for-hire type account.
@jneill has already highlighted some other content from the account, which again includes some Putin apologism
🧵🚨New analysis showing ALL tweets mentioning both "Muslim" & "UK" with over 500 retweets since 29 Jul. Graph shows which accounts got most impressions over time. Red/pink dots show anti-Muslim &/or anti-immigrant tweets, brown=neutral, green=tweets defending Muslims #UKRiots
2/ I grouped the tweets into the following three categories, 'anti', 'in defense of', and 'neutral'. Sadly the impressions gained by the number of 'anti' tweets was over 155 million (65%) while those 'in defense of' around 31 million. Neutral tweets were about 50 million.
3/ Parsing them finer we see that that the majority of the tweets were anti-Muslim, with half as many being both anti immigrant and both anti-Muslim. Some were solely anti-immigrant. #UKRiots
🧵🚨1/Somewhat depressing graph. I calculated whether all X posts with over 500 retweets mentioning the words "Muslim" and "UK" sent since 29th July were anti-muslim, anti-immigrant (red), neutral (blue), or in defense of muslims and/or immigration (green). #Ukriots #hatespeech
2/ I grouped the tweets into the following three categories, 'anti', 'in defense of', and 'neutral'. Sadly, the impressions gained by the number of 'Anti' tweets was over 159 million (67%), while those in defense of around 28 million. Neutral tweets were about 50 million
3/ Some of the most xenophobic and anti-muslim accounts include. @radiogenoa @goldingbf @tpointuk @jimfergusonuk @ashleasimonbf @europeinvasionn The degree of hate varies, from outright conspiracy theories, to suggestions that Muslims enjoy special treatment by the police.