-- TimVoogd - 08 Jan 2019

Mapping the Russian influence operation after MH17

Preliminary findings:
Twitter accounts operated by the Russian “Troll farm” IRA (Internet Research Agency) have been most active on July 18th, the day after the downing of MH17. They seem to blame Ukraine.

Research Questions:
- What narratives about the attack were promoted by IRA-trolls the day after the downing of MH17? - What strategies and methods were employed to steer public opinion?  

Findings:
- The IRA produced 57.306 tweets on July 18th, 2014, mostly in Russian and for a large part regarding MH17. For instance, 15.050 tweets contain the term “Боинг” (Boeing) and 13.676 tweets contain the hashtag “КиевСбилБоинг” (KievShotBoeing)  
- The IRA-trolls tried to blame Ukraine for the attack, promoting a wide range of conspiracy theories, echoing theories of the Russian Defense Ministry.  
- The influence campaign targeted the domestic public  
- A significant amount of tweets refers to LiveJournal posts (14%)  
- The trolls shared a notable amount of blogs by LiveJournal -blogger Katya Timofeeva  
- The IRA-trolls promoting MH17-conspiracy hashtags were not active during the US presidential elections. These 329 accounts tweeted 24 percent of all 9 million IRA-tweets.

Top Tweets  
The day after MH17, tweets by two accounts were retweeted the most. @KadirovRussia and @coldwar20_ru Most tweets are about MH17, but the most popular (638x) tweet was by @KadirovRussia: Если твои противники перешли на личные оскорбления, будь уверен, что ты победишь.© В.В.Путин. When your opponents have switched to personal insults, you can be sure that you have won © Vladimir Putin

Activity over time Most MH17-trolls became inactive at the end of 2015, when the IRA seemed to shift attention to the US  

Narratives: Hashtags
On the day after MH17 (July, 18), the most shared hashtags accuse Ukraine of shooting down MH17:

- Kiev, tell the truth (13.983x) - Kiev shot down the boeing (13.676x) - Provocation by Kiev (13.634x)

71% of all tweets on July 18th, include at least one of these three hashtags

Narratives: Hashtags

Narratives: images
Ukrainian fighter jets have downed the airplane

Text in image: “This was done by a jet gun”

LiveJournal
- 8100 tweets on July 18, 2014 contain links to Livejournal posts (14%).
- A blog post by Katya Timofeeva about how Ukraine shot down MH17 is the most shared link.
- 17th most visited website in Russia (according to Alexa)

Were (some) LiveJournal blogs run by the IRA?
- Trollaccounts are extremely connected (compared to regular Livejournal accounts)
- Whistleblowers admitted the IRA ran many fake LiveJournal blogs
- User wwevgemie (sound_of_music) publishes a series of posts by the end of june 2015, in which she admits having worked as a ‘kremlinbot’ in the Russian trollfactory IRA. She also gives detailed information about the IRA.

Katya Timofeeva (@timofeeva_kate)

• Wrote the most tweeted link on 18-07-2017, which was retweeted 551 times (36x in only one minute)

• The account was created in August 2013, when IRA supposedly started. She stopped tweeting one month after MH17

• She was most active on twitter the two days after MH17, very critical of Ukraine

• Seems to never sleep, and not traceable on other social media. The account is still online.

• Active on LiveJournal.com, where she posts memes, stories and political posts.

• Before MH17, the trolls were already fond of her blog

• She sometimes posted up to 9 blogs a day