How Russian Twitter accounts tried to spin election for Corbyn

THOUSANDS of russian twitter accounts tried to influence last year’s general election by rallying support for labour while denigrating the Conservatives, an investigation found.

it revealed most of the 6,500 accounts were internet robots – known as ‘bots’ – programmed to bombard voters with orchestrated political messages.

they often showed obvious signs they were bogus, with official account names generated from random strings of numbers and letters but labelled with english women’s names.

the research established that 80 per cent of the automated accounts were created in the weeks leading up to polling day on June 8 and were particularly active at key points in the campaign.

the russian bots overwhelmingly supported labour and its leader Jeremy Corbyn, with nine out of ten posts about the party in favour of its campaign. in contrast, nine out of ten tweets that mentioned the Conservatives were negative.

the report echoes claims of russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election in support of Donald trump. it comes at a time when critics have attacked Mr Corbyn over what they say is his unwilling- ness to criticise russia over the Salisbury nerve agent attack and the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

last night tory MP Nadine Dorries said the research by Swansea university and the Sunday times raises fears that similar tactics could influence this week’s local elections.

‘What we now see is the real reason why Corbyn refused to condemn the russians over the Salisbury poisoning,’ she added. ‘Corbyn has also refused to condemn [russian president] Vladimir Putin for standing shoulder to shoulder with the Syrian tyrant [Bashar] Assad. it seems the evidence is unequivocal: the Putin regime is supporting their friend Corbyn to get him into No 10 and are probably also interfering in the local elections.’

labour dismissed the report, saying it was not aware of any from automated bots. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell added that the claims were ‘farcical’ and a ‘classic smear’.

researchers from Swansea university collected millions of tweets posted about last year’s general election. they narrowed them down to a sample of 20,000 from accounts which listed their language or location as russian and which were posted in the four weeks leading up to the election.

they found most of the 6,500 russian accounts supporting labour were bots. they were often identifiable through their names. For example, the twitter user @Nr2AterXvfDy0N displayed the name Gabrielle Wilson, while @3udlH4vNxhmDksX appeared as Jessica Ferguson. Most of the accounts were later suspended by twitter or disappeared.

Professor oleksandr talavera, who collected the data, said: ‘the samples provide evidence that russian language bots were used to try to influence the election in favour of labour and against the Conservatives.

‘the data represents a small random sample and the russian-language automated bot behaviour we have observed is likely to be only the tip of the iceberg.’ Culture Secretary Matt Hancock told the Sunday times: ‘it is absolutely unacceptable for any nation to attempt to interfere in the democratic elections of another country.’

However labour said: ‘ the russian government made clear its support for the Conservative Party in the election, with the russian embassy in london promoting their ideological “convergence” and theresa May’s “strong and stable” slogan on twitter.’

twitter said: ‘We continue to improve our systems to detect and prevent new forms of spam and malicious automation.’