@PaulNiland pattern holds 1. Celebrate WWII for beating Hitler 2. If you disagree with Putin you hate Russia therefore you love Nazis because see rule 1 3. Discredit current gov (or opposition) using rule 2 4. Find common hate 4. Make Russia sound inevitable 5. Attack
@PaulNiland Estonia and Crimea are very similar in terms of how far Russian aggression took "Reflexive Control" during peace time. This includes setting up youth groups years in advance, social clubs, and online space information. Russia set up the Proryv Youth Group in Crimea 2005
@PaulNiland In Russian Dead general club now (no idea if not natural) read Colonel-General Nogovitsyn Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine 2014-2022 same playbook, same pattern. Estonia hit with devastated attack on information space and then DDOS , US somewhat with 2016-2018 and SolarWinds
@PaulNiland Scary thing is terror campaigns raining missiles down from the sky is part of controlling information space according to Russian doctrine of reflexive control. Theories from Schedrovitsky, V. E. Lepsky, and V. A. Lefebvre applied to warfare destroying will is reflexive control
@PaulNiland Here is a data set going back to 2022-02 on Ukraine and Russia: https://bit.ly/3UMxz8S Chen, E., & Ferrara, E. (2022). Tweets in time of conflict: A public dataset tracking the twitter discourse on the war between ukraine and russia. arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.07488.
@PaulNiland In terms of UK the research is a bit harder as much of the data was wiped and accounts closed. We do know for example that of the 1200 or so accounts released by Twitter as being involved in American election disinfo over a third also published brexit content
@PaulNiland The trends don't of course equal causation globally. Trolls use the lowest common denominator to scratch at scabs already there But big influence campaigns follow a pattern. Read Andrii Demartino's work for a look at Pro Russia on Crimean social network 2013 v 2014
@PaulNiland Yeah for journalists Google Trends can provide interesting data points. I don't have real social network analysis tool kits or skills and these are just basic surface level stuff. Social media so disaggregated now you really need time and skill or money to purchase data
@PaulNiland For example here is the last thirty days of #NAFO https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IOOc03Mg2FmHG59PWK_67BPcZVA4caK67zRDw3xZCho/edit?usp=drivesdk I will pull together an annotated bibliography of research on #disinfo. Russia and Wagner Digital Mercanaries uses a very similar playbook
@PaulNiland Google Trends and Talkwalker primarily . For Twitter I set up a tool called TAGS explorer. Works with Google sheets. I can then import spreadsheet Then researchers who publish data. Important for tracking trends in other languages As a barbaric American I only speak English.
@BrianDogeMiller @RealAlexRubi Dude. This is serious. Terrorists of the soft air have escalated from terrorist of ball paint weapons Some are so diabolical they shoot at over 300 fps