Analysis of the possible presence of information manipulation regarding the Romanian Presidential Elections.
Results :
Astroturfing and thousand of illegal contents (threats, antisemitism...)
Pdf of the full study here :
https://tinyurl.com/RomPrTiktok
And some context in thread 🧵
Results :
Astroturfing and thousand of illegal contents (threats, antisemitism...)
Pdf of the full study here :
https://tinyurl.com/RomPrTiktok
And some context in thread 🧵
Comments
"en même temps depuis O-Zone on le savait, que les clips Roumains étaient quand même pas dignes de confiance"
For the use of Tiktok, it's ~3th social network in romania, according to most studies ( 9 to 10 millions users).
So yeah, astroturfing and algorithm manipulation, by distorting what TikTok thinks the audience of each channel wants.
And TikTok doesn't seem to care.
I had the opportunity to conduct this study with the Center for AI & Digital Humanism as part of active monitoring on these societal issues, focusing on the manipulation of public opinion through the illegitimate use of social media.
I collected as much comments as I could (1.5 million) of Romanian tiktok about this subject.
And I used multiple techniques to understand what they are about.
People can celebrate a candidate in many ways.
But 5k instances of just the candidate's name?
With 35k comments that are only slight variations of the same copy-pasted message?
With his closest rival is mentioned only 460 times?
Also, the influence campaign really made the difference, it would seem to be a step-change improvement in impact compared to Russia' previous indirect attempts to drive partisan polarization (i.e., a model for the future).
There are the full official statements there ( argumented decisions, proofs from declassified romanian intels...)
(I quoted it in the thread)