An Australian university has unearthed millions of Tweets by fake ‘bot’ accounts pushing disinformation on the Ukraine war.
by Peter Cronau
Part 3 - Unfiltered and independent research
The landmark Adelaide University research differs from these earlier revelations in another most unique and spectacular way.
While the Stanford-Graphika and Meta research was produced by researchers who have long-term deep ties to the US national security state, the Adelaide University researchers are remarkably independent. The academic team is from the university’s School of Mathematical Science. Using mathematical calculations, they set out to predict and model people’s psychological traits based on their digital footprint.
Unlike the datasets selected and provided for the Stanford/Graphika and the Meta research, the data the Adelaide University team accessed didn’t come from accounts after they’ve been detected for breaching guidelines and shut down by Meta or Twitter.
While the Stanford-Graphika and Meta research was produced by researchers who have long-term deep ties to the US national security state, the Adelaide University researchers are remarkably independent. The academic team is from the university’s School of Mathematical Science. Using mathematical calculations, they set out to predict and model people’s psychological traits based on their digital footprint.
Unlike the datasets selected and provided for the Stanford/Graphika and the Meta research, the data the Adelaide University team accessed didn’t come from accounts after they’ve been detected for breaching guidelines and shut down by Meta or Twitter.
Joshua Watt is one of the lead researchers on the university team, and is a MPhil candidate in Applied Mathematics and Statistics from the university’s School of Mathematical Sciences.
He told Declassified Australia that the dataset of 5-million tweets was accessed directly by the team from Twitter accounts on the internet using an academic license giving access to the Twitter API. The ‘Application Programming Interface’ is a data communication software tool that allows researchers to directly retrieve and analyse Twitter data.
He told Declassified Australia that the dataset of 5-million tweets was accessed directly by the team from Twitter accounts on the internet using an academic license giving access to the Twitter API. The ‘Application Programming Interface’ is a data communication software tool that allows researchers to directly retrieve and analyse Twitter data.
The fake tweets and automated bot accounts had not been detected and removed by Twitter before being analysed by the researchers, although some were possibly removed in the March sweep by Twitter. Watt told Declassified Australia that in fact many of the bot accounts behind the 5-million tweets studied are likely to be still up and running.
Declassified Australia contacted Twitter to ask what action they may have taken to remove the fake bot accounts identified in the University of Adelaide research. They had not responded by the time of going to press.
Declassified Australia contacted Twitter to ask what action they may have taken to remove the fake bot accounts identified in the University of Adelaide research. They had not responded by the time of going to press.
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