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The Swedish election campaign is being manipulated on Twitter
Data analysis expert Alberto Escorcia: “Sweden is a banana republic”
Systematic electoral influence is taking place in Sweden. Armies of people and software are using server power and unaccounted money to amplify partisan political messages online. Those who manipulate often want to emphasize voices that put forward messages of a xenophobic nature. But the manipulation also takes place in, for example, the nuclear power issue and also lifts the message of established parties. Troll farms in Sweden and abroad are used, but also various forms of automated accounts. These are purchased campaigns with unknown senders, and clearly violate Twitter’s own rules.
It shows data analysis by the internationally recognized expert Alberto Escorcia . He has previously analyzed Twitter’s role in election campaigns in several countries, and his work has been noticed by, among others, Al-Jazeera, The Guardian and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Aftonbladet Kultur asked Escorcia to do a data analysis of the Swedish election campaign on Twitter based on three questions:
1. Does the data show that there are some forms of manipulation going on in connection with what prominent Swedish politicians communicate on Twitter?
2. If yes: which prominent politicians’ accounts and statements fit this pattern?
3. If yes: describe the “anatomy” of the coordinated manipulation based on data in the Swedish election campaign.
Twitter has a number of criteria for defining unacceptable behavior. Among them are exactly the methods that are clearly visible in the Swedish political debate on the platform.
One of the most common is automated retweets and likes. Accounts are set up or purchased, solely for the purpose of automatically liking and spreading further messages. It is entirely possible to buy Twitter accounts that have gathered followers since 2010 and then convert them into bots that spread messages in, for example, an election campaign. It takes a few minutes and an account card, then tweets with selected hashtags are liked or retweeted everything that comes from a…
