The phenomenon of Russian IRA trolls has taken centre stage in the last months, casting a shadow on our understanding of the mechanisms which move social network discussions and debates in general.

What is IRA?

IRA is a Russian agency which has been acting in the last years as a producer of troll tweets, with the aim of interfering with online discussions. Fake profiles were cretaed which engage in and fosters political and social debate, creating a climate of divisiveness and hate.

Why does it matter?

In a period of political instability due to the economic crisis and the challenges that Western States are facing, it is all the more important to try to understand what are the means by which IRA acts to exacerbates the weaknesses of our society and reinforce the tensions which characterise our countries.

Still not convinced?

We will show you the proportions of this phenomenon, how the timing is carefully chosen, how the language stirs specific sentiments and much more: all of this with the specific focus of Italian tweets produced by Russian trolls.

For the social good

Nobody wants some external entity to impose a certain mindset, orient the political debate and push a particular point of view on delicate issues. Investigate the behaviour of Russian trolls means to foster informed and independent decisions, not spurred by heated online debates…

… and why not let the data themselves show what this is all about?

The focus of this analysis is on the Italian tweets of IRA, which have not yet been a specific object of study. We want to see if and how the action of trolls adapts to the specific Italian situation: to do that, it might help to be familiar with some trends in the Italian socio-economic situation and political panorama. Explore the section The Setting to obtain some key facts, it might help if you’re not familiar with the context.

Our thesis

We claim that it is possible to witness a strategy implemented by IRA to highlight the weaknesses of the Italian system and stimulate divisiveness within the society. We show that the trolls’ interest is mainly political, their activity follows specific time trends and provides a particularly gloomy portrait of the current situation. We will see the trolls’ objects of attention are varied and when it comes to politics no actor escapes the heated tweets of the trolls.

Structure:

This website is structured in four sections:

  1. In The setting, we show some recent facts and figures about Italy, where the story takes place.
  2. The Words follows, where we take a closer look at what the characters of our story say. We analyse the content of our tweets, how words are cleverly combined and which sentiments dominate the trolls’ short statements.
  3. The characters is the moment when the protagonists introduce themselves together with their points of view,
  4. The Dynamics analyses the behaviour of trolls: their productivity, their public, the timing of their activity and the places they go to in their tweets.

A small final section (About Us) is dedicated to our group’s presentation.

Please visit the GitHub repository and the notebook for further details on the methodologies, some more results and the credits to picture displayed in this story.