Half of ‘Last Jedi’ haters were bots, study says

How much did movie fans hate Star Wars: The Last Jedi? Perhaps not as fiercely as social media might suggest, according to an American study, which found that half of the negative tweets about the 2017 movie came from bots or trolls, some of whom may be Russian.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which focused on ageing Jedi Luke Skywalker’s reluctance to be drawn back into the battle against the dark side in the sci-fi saga, prompted criticism online after its release in December last year. Many lashed out at key roles given to women and actors of colour in the movie, while others were dismayed at the apparent death of Skywalker, played by Mark Hamill.

A study by University of Southern California research fellow Morten Bay, released last week, analysed the language, Twitter handles and IP addresses of more than 1,200 tweets sent to Last Jedi director Rian Johnson’s Twitter handle in the seven months after the film’s release. “Overall, 50.9 percent of those tweeting negatively were likely politically motivated or not even human,” Bay wrote. He said they appeared to be using the debate around The Last

Jedi “to propagate political messages supporting extreme right-wing causes and the discrimination of gender, race or sexuality.”

“A number of these users appear to be Russian trolls,” he added in the paper, called Weaponising the Haters: The Last Jedi and the strategic politicisation of pop culture through social media manipulation.

Bay said the likely objective was to increase “media coverage of the fandom conflict, thereby adding to and further propagating a narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society.”