Checking a Suspicious Audience
From ADTAC Disinformation Inventory
It is necessary to examine the audience of a suspected spreader of disinformation for evidence that many of their followers are automated or false accounts or those of fellow trolls. This is one of the steps of how to Identify Creators of Disinformation.
Check the Rates of Shares and of Followers
- A new account and small account that gets and extreme amount of shares is suspect. Look at the account followers for there are influential accounts who may have shared their post, this may account for the extreme amount of shares. A post from a small account which is shared by a high profile account which clearly has biased views and disinformation quickly is suspect.
- Check the first followers on twitter. If the same batch of accounts are the first followers with each other this is suspect.
- Look at the ratio of followers to accounts it follows. An account with a huge number of followers rapidly accumulated and very few followed accounts then it is suspicious.
- Check if there is an organic spike in followers by using socialblade.com long straight spikes up or down are suspicious. It either means they went viral or had a fake following composed of fake accounts or trollfactory accounts. Check if the post has any popular posts around the time it got a large number of followers.
- A negative spike could mean a mass deletion of fake accounts. Use Trollrensics software to find out what kind of followers were deleted.
Check the Audience
- Determine if the group of followers is credible. If the content doesn't below to a high profile person or organization than if they are relatively new and have a huge following (over 1000 in a month) then this is suspect. Check for anonymous accounts among their followers and see if they are the majority of the group. Check for similarities in the online biographies of the followers, such as similar creation date and similar writing in the biographies. To check quickly if two Twitter accounts follow each other use: tweetbeaver.com/mutualfollow.php
- Is this audience the same as the intended target audience of the post? Is the account trying to speak to his own following or is he addressing and trying to move another group?