Trump supporters not happy just to say home?
Did Twitter trolls try to meddle in the Canadian election and influence voters?
The jury is still out, but in the last week of the federal election campaign, three independent researchers sounded alarms about an uptick in online activity that could have been part of a campaign to sway opinions.
When looking at tweets that used the popular hashtag #TrudeauMustGo, these researchers found that some of the most active users had in their profiles the acronym “MAGA” — for “Make America Great Again”, the slogan of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
If you include other terms linked to the American right wing — like “KAG” (Keep America Great), “Trump” and “QAnon” (a reference to a widely-debunked American online conspiracy theory), the number jumps to 20 per cent, Jones said. These accounts featuring terms associated with the American right also were found to have tweeted a lot about Brexit.
The fact that Trump supporters held forth on Canadian and British politics is puzzling, since adherents of the MAGA movement tend to be more focused on domestic issues in the U.S…..
I think it far, far more likely that the trolling was done by Russian and allied ’bots (Good Morning, St Petersburg !! How’s IRA ?) who were also used to interfere in the Brexit referendum (June 2016, coinciding in time with Trump’s nomination fight) and the Canadian election, than by genuine, American human enthusiasts for DJT.
However keeping usernames that include MAGA, etc., seems like a rather dumb, amateurish error for something as sophisticated as the Internet Research Agency.
I agree….