Understanding the Properties of Extremists Disinformation Campaigns

• In Event: Cross-Platform Approaches to Online Harms

Abstract

Nationally publicized political events often become focal points of disinformation campaigns which may also trigger spontaneous or crowd-sourced diffusion of political disinformation and extremist materials. The current research utilizes an original events-level dataset that documents real-time characteristics of disinformation-triggering political events in order to identify online disinformation clusters, and dissemination pathways. Hence, we employ network science to gain insights about the scope, structure and speed of disinformation networks. In addition, we utilize computerized linguistic tools for content and sentiments analysis to examine the association between the characteristics of the disseminated disinformation and the structure and characteristics of dissemination pathways. Our findings reflect that indeed the characteristics of a political event have significant implications on the likelihood of outbreak of related extremist disinformation, as well as on the specific structure of the pathways in which the disinformation is being distributed. Additionally, we found that the content of the disinformation campaign has a clear impact on the speed of dissemination and the likelihood that it will result in violent manifestations.

Authors

• Arie Perliger, University of Massachusetts Lowell

• Tess Hemmila