Out of the Shadows: Analyzing Anonymous' Twitter Resurgence during the 2020 Black Lives Matter Protests
Keenan Jones, Jason R. C. Nurse, Shujun Li

TL;DR
This study investigates the resurgence of Anonymous on Twitter during the 2020 BLM protests, revealing a large network of accounts, their focus on BLM topics, sentiment patterns, and widespread bot-like activity that may inflate perceived activity.
Contribution
The paper introduces a large-scale machine learning approach to identify Anonymous accounts and analyzes their activity, sentiment, and automation, providing insights into their resurgence during the protests.
Findings
Identified over 33,000 Anonymous accounts on Twitter.
Found sustained interest in BLM-related topics among these accounts.
Detected widespread bot-like behavior across the network.
Abstract
Recently, there had been little notable activity from the once prominent hacktivist group, Anonymous. The group, responsible for activist-based cyber attacks on major businesses and governments, appeared to have fragmented after key members were arrested in 2013. In response to the major Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests that occurred after the killing of George Floyd, however, reports indicated that the group was back. To examine this apparent resurgence, we conduct a large-scale study of Anonymous affiliates on Twitter. To this end, we first use machine learning to identify a significant network of more than 33,000 Anonymous accounts. Through topic modelling of tweets collected from these accounts, we find evidence of sustained interest in topics related to BLM. We then use sentiment analysis on tweets focused on these topics, finding evidence of a united approach amongst the group,…
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Taxonomy
TopicsHate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Spam and Phishing Detection
