The vast pro-Ukrainian ‘bot army’ designed to influence Western policy makers — Analysis
The University of Adelaide has published an important paper about bot accounts and Twitter’s involvement in the conflict in Ukraine. These Australian findings are truly staggering – of 5.2 million tweets on the social media network from February 23 to March 8, between 60 to 80% were shared by fake accounts. What’s more, 90% of those posts were pro-Ukraine.
In particular, these accounts pushed the hashtags #IStandWithUkraine, #IStandWithZelenskyy, and #ISupportUkraine, and myths like the ‘Ghost of Kiev’, a fictional Ukrainian fighter pilot who is farcically alleged to have taken down 40 Russian jets within hours of the military operation commencing.
These accounts were all in English and led researchers to believe that they had been created to trick the public. “drive more disruption in English-speaking countries And “influence a variety of user groups.” Although the main focus is on English, the bots of Ukraine used the Russian language. “cause more disruption” In the country