Political Astroturfing on Twitter: How to Coordinate a Disinformation Campaign

“…level have become more influential, political actors such as governments (King, Pan, & Roberts, 2017; Lukito et al., 2018), hyperpartisan media (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Faris et al., 2017), far-right groups (Marwick & Lewis, 2017) or actors with economic motives (Silverman & Alexander, 2016)…”

“…a “social movement grows when people with grievances meet, agree on a common agenda, and organize for political action” (Howard, 2006, p. 86; see also Bennett & Segerberg, 2013), an astroturfing campaign tries to appear like such an organic expression of public opinion, but is actually centrally…”

“, they tweet on the same days – and groups them together (Hartigan, 1972).”

“Tweets posted by known and suspect NIS accounts should reflect these goals and strategies, and therefore differ significantly from those posted by regular users, political users, and opinion leaders (Broniatowski et al., 2018).”

“In order to prevent this type of shirking, the principal may opt for constant and direct supervision by physically locating all agents in the same office – as done by the “Russian troll factories”(3) – or at least hire them to work during office hours instead of paying by post, as the eponymous “50 cent party” alleged…”

“Social media also have the potential to set the news agenda (Chadwick, 2013; Neuman, Guggenheim, Jang, & Bae, 2014) as journalists pay close attention to social media buzz (Lukito et al.”

“To better understand how the patterns of the two types of campaigns should differ, we turn to principal-agent theory (Miller, 2005; Ross, 1973).”

“Retweeting is often used to amplify the impact of a campaign (Yang & Kim, 2017), and retweet patterns usually reflect political divisions among Twitter users (Conover et al., 2011).”

“Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have become major venues for ordinary citizens to discuss politics, disseminate news, and organize collective action (Bennett & Segerberg, 2013; Lilleker & Koc-Michalska, 2017; Stier et al., 2018; Thorson & Wells, 2016; Vaccari, 2017).”

“We argue that past research’s predominant focus on automated accounts, famously known as “social bots”, (see Howard & Kollanyi, 2016; Varol, Ferrara, Davis, Menczer, & Flammini, 2017) misses its target since reports on recent astroturfing campaigns suggest that they are often at least partially run…”

“…governments (King, Pan, & Roberts, 2017; Lukito et al., 2018), hyperpartisan media (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Faris et al., 2017), far-right groups (Marwick & Lewis, 2017) or actors with economic motives (Silverman & Alexander, 2016) try to influence the public with false, misleading or…”

“Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have become major venues for ordinary citizens to discuss politics, disseminate news, and organize collective action (Bennett & Segerberg, 2013; Lilleker & Koc-Michalska, 2017; Stier et al., 2018; Thorson & Wells, 2016; Vaccari, 2017).”

“The increasing roles of opinion leaders and ordinary citizens in the public opinion formation process can enable new actors to frame public discourses in their favor (Bode et al., 2015).”

“Grimme et al. (2018), for instance, find that most of the accounts involved in a troll attack during a German elections TV debate were less than one month old.”

“Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have become major venues for ordinary citizens to discuss politics, disseminate news, and organize collective action (Bennett & Segerberg, 2013; Lilleker & Koc-Michalska, 2017; Stier et al., 2018; Thorson & Wells, 2016; Vaccari, 2017).”

“Its participants also send out similar messages, but they are intrinsically motivated, and usually organized in a more decentralized fashion than agents of an astroturfing campaign (Bennett & Segerberg, 2013; Walker, 2014).”

“The third baseline is created using all 27,606 tweets posted by 58 opinion leaders as identified by Bae, Son, and Song (2013).10 10The list of opinion leaders includes major politicians, Twitter celebrities, popular podcasters, journalists, We use these datasets for three types of content…”

“Retweeting is often used to amplify the impact of a campaign (Yang & Kim, 2017), and retweet patterns usually reflect political divisions among Twitter users (Conover et al., 2011).”

“86; see also Bennett & Segerberg, 2013), an astroturfing campaign tries to appear like such an organic expression of public opinion, but is actually centrally coordinated and organized – hence the analogy to the eponymous carpet “AstroTurf” which tries to mimic real grass (Howard, 2006; Walker, 2014).”

“These messages drew attention away from negative news, denigrated the opposition, and raised divisive issues ( 164 ).”

“Overall it is also important to broaden the perspective and focus more on political digital astroturfing [46] for which bots are just one potential dimension [47].”