Marc Owen Jones Profile picture
Apr 13, 2022 11 tweets 4 min read Read on X
🧵1/ Some have asked why 'Back Boris' is trending. The simple answer is, because it's a polarising topic of course! As you can see from this analysis of around 15000 tweets involving 9000 accounts, the hashtag brings out both supporters and detractors of Johnson Image
2/ 'Back Boris', along with 'Scum Media' tend to trend every time Boris does something stupid (which, let's face it, is quite often). Johnson and Sunak's recent fines for having a knees up when the rest of the country couldn't even see dying loved ones has irked a lot of people Image
3/ Criticism of Boris tends to bring out his supporters like those scary demons from the film Ghost. I recoloured edges here by the most popular tweets (Remember, most hashtags are RTs). We can see, bad graphic design, poor spelling (#hypocripes), & digs at BLM, reign supreme Image
4/ Out in the anti-Boris nebula we have a picture of poo, someone denigrating the intelligence of Tories, and Kevin asking why there are so many pro-Boris copypasta accounts (IT'S JUST FOOTBALL FANS HAVING A LAUGH.... sure it is). Image
5/ Of course analysing biographies might seem redundant. But life is short. In the pro-Boris group, 'back boris' is the second most common biographical phrase with 313 accounts stanning Boris. As expected, being pro-Brexit features highly. Interestingly, 'woke' (as in anti-woke) Image
6/ is in number 8. Looks like the same crew who were hating on Nazanin... Something I found weird though was 'dms' (as in, No DMs) in 16 place. 150 ppl in the pro Boris account instruct people not to send them DMs! In addition to being a good marker for unpleasant people Image
7/ 'No DMs' is usually an indicator of a suspicious account. Or maybe angry Back Boris accounts just get a lot of fanmail? Who knows. Out in flavour country, we've got the 'socialists', pro-EU accounts, and 'johnson out' accounts. A lot of love for the NHS too. No surprises there Image
8/ There are barely any verified accounts in this hashtag. Not that I am suggesting verified = important. Just highlighting that its mostly regular no tick hoi polloi like myself, tweeting like an angry mob so you don't have to.
9/ So TLDR. Back Boris is trending because Boris fans are mad he's getting flack for being a bad Prime Minister. Anti-Boris folks are angry that Boris is Prime Minister and that some people back him. Pro-Boris types seem to be invested in anti-BLM & woke culture wars
10/ Some notable results include the number of people with 'back boris' (+300) in their account biographies. Also the amount of pro-Boris accounts who have 'No DMs' in their bio may warrant further scrutiny. Other than that, Racists gonna race, socialists gonna socialise. Laters!
11/ p.s. to re-emphasize, there is little overlap between the two communities (echo chambers).

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More from @marcowenjones

Nov 20
🧵1/ I analysed the headline and lead paragraph of 536 English news articles including the terms "Maccabi" + "Amsterdam" and classified them using Claude 3.5 Sonnet to determine how many framed Israelis as victims or non-Israelis as primary victims (as well as both). Image
2/ The results are fairly striking. 65% of articles frame Israelis as the victim, while only 5% frame Non-Israelis as victims. 24% are neutral while 9% framed both groups as victims. Quite clear the media emphasised violence as anti-Israeli and antisemitic, especially early on Image
3/ There isn't much evidence too of corrective framing at this point, although a small increase in neutral framing a week after the incident. Israeli victimhood was categorised as emphasis of violence initiated by non-Israelis, and focus on anti-Israeli or antisemitic violence
Read 4 tweets
Nov 14
🧵 1/ Part of understanding what is going on in Amsterdam is also to understand the coordinated anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant campaigns run with huge amounts of money targeting Europe. Here's a short private Eye article about an investigation I did with @SohanDsouza
2/ Here's a write-up by @karamballes on the campaign in @BylineTimes "Disinformation Campaign on Social Media Reached More Than 40 Million People – but Meta ‘Alarmingly’ Hasn't Revealed the Culprits' bylinetimes.com/2024/08/30/qat…
@karamballes @BylineTimes 3/ ...How a covert influence campaign helped Europe’s far right

Our findings about the shadowy multi-platform operation attacking Qatar and stoking Islamophobia to further its far-right agenda in Europe and beyond call for immediate action. aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/…
Read 6 tweets
Nov 9
🧵🚨1/ This is nuts. After mysteriously deleting a package covering the Amsterdam protests, Sky News have put up a new version. The new version completely changes the thrust to emphasise that the violence was antisemitic. See the opening screenshot change below Image
Image
2/Even the tweet accompanying the video has changed. It has explicitly shifted from mentioning anti-Arab slogans to removing the phrase "anti-Arab" and using antisemitism. It also removes mention of vandalism by Israeli fans. An extremely clear editorial shift! Image
Image
3/ They have also inserted into the video, right after the opening footage of Dutch Prime Minister condemning antisemitsm. This was not in the original video. Image
Read 10 tweets
Nov 8
1/ If you break down the BBC's live reporting of what happened in Amsterdam, you can see the disproportionate attention it pays to Maccabi fans and Israelis as victims, with far less attention paid to the actions of Maccabi fans. Here are the sources interviewed. Image
2/ In terms of mentions of Arab, Dutch or other Ajax fans, there is very little emphasis on Arab safety, with the majority of coverage focused on Maccabi fans as victims. There are vox pops with fans, but very little interaction with non-Maccabi people. Image
Image
3/ The language used to describe the attacks on the Maccabi fans is also much stronger, ranging from pogroms to brutal and shocking. Similar terms aren't use for the anti-Arab racism. Image
Read 4 tweets
Nov 8
🚨1/ This New York Times piece is wild. Let's go through it.

Firstly, the lede is an emphasis that attacks in Amsterdam were based on antisemitism, yet it cites no evidence of this, but DOES cite evidence of anti-Arab chants. Image
2/ The claims of antisemitism are based primarily on the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, who tweeted that the attacks were antisemitic. Note - the Dutch Prime Minister didn't call out anti-Arab or anti-Palestinian racism from Maccabi fans. Image
3/ The piece links to an Amsterdam police statement to talk about the violence - although the police statement doesn't mention anything about antisemitism. Image
Read 9 tweets
Oct 29
🧵 'At least 1,800 bots on the social media site X are promoting the controversial choice of Azerbaijan, a major oil and gas producer, to host next month’s ...#COP29, according to a new analysis shared exclusively with The Washington Post".

washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro…Image
2/ The analysis by Marc Owen Jones, an expert on disinformation at @NUQatar, focused on roughly 2,800 X accounts that collectively sent around 10,800 tweets, retweets and replies about the conference between Oct. 17 and Oct. 24.
3/ Detection

73% of all accounts active in sample created in the space of 3 quarters in 2024.

Conservative estimates suggest 66% (1876) accounts in the sample are fake (bots) based on activity over the past week Image
Read 10 tweets

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