About Chinese propaganda on Twitter: drawing data 📊
Some days ago the journalist Charlotte Godart contacted me and asked me to explain how to use my script tweet_analysis.py. Her goal was to convert Twitter datasets about Chinese propaganda into graphs, so that people can see how the Chinese government operates on Twitter to influence their opinion. While helping her I had the possibility to take a look at these datasets and they are intriguing, very different from the Internet Research Agency dataset. My unconfirmed theory is that the Chinese government bought some bots and fake accounts from third-party companies. China has a strong power on national internet services such as TikTok or WeChat (e.g. filters, censorship), not so much on external services, though, for now. I think this situation will change quickly. ...