Do Authoritarian Regimes Thrive in Less Transparent Social Media Spaces?

• In Event: Navigating Political Narratives: New Frontiers in Text Analysis, LLMs and NLP

Abstract

Social media platforms have become increasingly important spaces in global information ecosystems, making them susceptible to manipulation by state actors seeking to advance their political agendas. While the transnational spread of state-sponsored content on social media has garnered widespread attention, the role of platforms in facilitating their reach remains largely unexplored. Using a quasi-experimental design, I examine the effects of unannounced platform policy changes on the influence of state actors from China, Iran, and Russia. Using digital traces from Twitter accounts linked to these high capacity regimes, I analyze engagement metrics, tweet volumes, and topic models to identify patterns in online behavior before and after Twitter removed labels for government and state-affiliated media content. I expect to find that, after Twitter removed labels from state actors’ accounts engagement with state actors increased and state actors changed how they used Twitter. My results suggest that, while this policy change did not yield significant increases in engagement and tweet volumes, there are notable differences in how this policy affected official government accounts and state-affiliated media outlets. This research has important implications for understanding how state actors might benefit from or take advantage of social media, even on global platforms like Twitter where their governments do not have direct provision over content moderation.

Author

• Allison Wun-hui Koh, University of Birmingham