Characterizing the use of images by state-sponsored troll accounts on Twitter
Files
Accepted manuscript
Date
2020-06-08
DOI
Authors
Zannettou, Savvas
Bradly, Barry
De Cristofaro, Emiliano
Stringhini, Gianluca
Blackburn, Jeremy
Version
Accepted manuscript
OA Version
Citation
Savvas Zannettou, Barry Bradly, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Gianluca Stringhini, Jeremy Blackburn. 2020. "Characterizing the Use of Images by State-Sponsored Troll Accounts on Twitter." AAAI International Conference on Web and Social Media
Abstract
State-sponsored organizations are increasingly linked to efforts
aimed to exploit social media for information warfare and manipulating
public opinion. Typically, their activities rely on a
number of social network accounts they control, aka trolls, that
post and interact with other users disguised as “regular” users.
These accounts often use images and memes, along with textual
content, in order to increase the engagement and the credibility
of their posts.
In this paper, we present the first study of images shared by
state-sponsored accounts by analyzing a ground truth dataset
of 1.8M images posted to Twitter by accounts controlled by
the Russian Internet Research Agency. First, we analyze the
content of the images as well as their posting activity. Then,
using Hawkes Processes, we quantify their influence on popular
Web communities like Twitter, Reddit, 4chan’s Politically
Incorrect board (/pol/), and Gab, with respect to the dissemination
of images. We find that the extensive image posting activity
of Russian trolls coincides with real-world events (e.g., the
Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville), and shed light on their
targets as well as the content disseminated via images. Finally,
we show that the trolls were more effective in disseminating
politics-related imagery than other images.