ROBOTROLLING 2/2020
ROBOTROLLING 2/2020

Author(s): Rolf Fredheim, Kristina Van Sant
Subject(s): Media studies, International relations/trade, Politics and communication, Crowd Psychology: Mass phenomena and political interactions, Social Informatics, Geopolitics
Published by: NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence
Keywords: Robotrolling; bot activities; social media; disinformation; pro-Kremlin social media accounts; COVID-19 pandemic; pro-Kremlin bots; online manipulation of information;
Summary/Abstract: Bot activity this quarter fixated on the global COVID-19 pandemic, with conversations about the virus captured by our dataset peaking in March. Pro-Kremlin social media accounts amplified a false story, originally shared by a Russian politician, that Poland closed its airspace to Russian planes delivering humanitarian aid to Italy. Though we found that bots commanded the Russian-language conversations about COVID-19, their content was no more viral than examples from recent Robotrolling reports. Throughout this quarter, we observed a considerable reduction in both the number of unique users and volume of messages. Inauthentic English- and Russian-language activity experienced a similar decline. Since late March, Russian-language activity on Twitter and on VK has been abnormally low. On VK, the conversation about NATO in the Baltics and Poland is currently being conducted in groups with regional or nationalist profiles. Notably, the large Russian state-run media outlets we frequently observe on the platform have engaged far less with the subject in recent months. Additionally, we observed a halving of posts from bot accounts this quarter. Finally, in this edition of Robotrolling, we delve into the role of pro-Kremlin bots in spreading disinformation about COVID-19 throughout March. In our analysis, we identify striking differences between how bots engaged with COVID-19 in the Russian- and English-language information spaces.

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