Dr Vidya Narayanan
Former Postdoctoral Researcher
Vidya studies machine learning for biodiversity, as part of the "Benchmark for Nature" project for the Oxford Martin School's Programme on Biodiversity and Society.
Published on
19 Dec 2017
19 Dec 2017
Several prominent UK politicians are concerned about the role of Russian troll and bot accounts in public conversation over social media during the Brexit debate in 2016. Looking at our archive of Twitter conversation we find that (1) Russian Twitter accounts shared to the public, contributed relatively little to the overall Brexit conversation, (2) Russian news content was not widely shared among Twitter users, and (3) only a tiny portion of the YouTube content was of a clear Russian origin. It is possible that there are other accounts, not yet discovered, that influenced Brexit conversations, and that there was other activity on platforms like Instagram, or Facebook. We conclude with some observations about the impact of strategically disseminated polarizing information on public life.Russia and Brexit
Vidya Narayanan, Philip N. Howard, Bence Kollanyi, Mona Elswah. “Russian Involvement and Junk News during Brexit” Data Memo 2017.10. Oxford, UK: Project on Computational Propaganda. demtech.oii.ox.ac.uk.
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Professor Philip Howard
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Philip N. Howard is a professor of sociology, information, and international affairs. He is Director of the Programme on Democracy and Technology, and is a Professorial Fellow of Balliol College.
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Mona Elswah is a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), where she examines digital repression, collective actions, and disinformation in the Arab world