The Spread of Propaganda by Coordinated Communities on Social Media

TL;DR

This paper investigates how coordinated communities on Twitter spread propaganda during the 2019 UK election, introducing new metrics and analysis methods to distinguish authentic from inauthentic online behaviors.

Contribution

It develops novel metrics for propaganda use, analyzes the interplay with coordination, and offers a methodology for comprehensive online behavior analysis.

Findings

Propaganda use varies across communities.

Coordination correlates with higher propaganda dissemination.

Insights into authenticity and harmfulness of online groups.

Abstract

Large-scale manipulations on social media have two important characteristics: (i) use of propaganda to influence others, and (ii) adoption of coordinated behavior to spread it and to amplify its impact. Despite the connection between them, these two characteristics have so far been considered in isolation. Here we aim to bridge this gap. In particular, we analyze the spread of propaganda and its interplay with coordinated behavior on a large Twitter dataset about the 2019 UK general election. We first propose and evaluate several metrics for measuring the use of propaganda on Twitter. Then, we investigate the use of propaganda by different coordinated communities that participated in the online debate. The combination of the use of propaganda and coordinated behavior allows us to uncover the authenticity and harmfulness of the different communities. Finally, we compare our measures of propaganda and coordination with automation (i.e., bot) scores and Twitter suspensions, revealing interesting trends. From a theoretical viewpoint, we introduce a methodology for analyzing several important dimensions of online behavior that are seldom conjointly considered. From a practical viewpoint, we provide new insights into authentic and inauthentic online activities during the 2019 UK general election.