Coding hundreds of tweets & using a machine learning tool, I have preliminary evidence which suggests the PRC government is conducting a new effort on Twitter to amplify genocidal language & generate the perception of Chinese ultranationalism toward Taiwan.

Findings below:

[1]
Brief rewind: a week ago, I shared the trend below, demonstrating a sudden increase in 2020 on Twitter of the genocidal phrase 留岛不留人 (“keep the island, rid of its people”).

It raises the question: is the trend state-backed or an organic outpouring of ultranationalism?

[2]
To get at the answer, I divided all 314 tweets from Feb 2020 into two groups: (1) advocating for the genocidal idea or (2) criticizing/responding to the idea. Overall, there were 261 unique accounts. Two-thirds (163) were advocating and one-third (98) were responding.

[3]
Using a machine learning tool @botometer, I discovered that accounts advocating for the genocidal phrase had much greater prevalence of suspicious or bot-like traits.

Below is a distribution of scores for all 261 accounts.

Blue = less suspicious account traits
Red = more

[4]
50% of the accounts advocating for the genocidal phrase had two or more traits with a score between 4-5, meaning very suspicious or bot-like characteristics.

In contrast, only 4% of accounts criticizing/responding to the phrase had two or more traits scored between 4-5.

[5]
Botometer predicts the probability an account is completely automated. This discrepancy is also striking (see chart).

A third of accounts advocating for the genocidal phrase are 20% or more likely to be completely automated, compared to only 4 accounts in the other group.

[6]
So what does this mean?

We know that since Jan 2020, there’s been a sharp increase in accounts putting out ultranationalist & genocidal posts toward Taiwan in simplified Chinese. Now, the sample above indicates a large number of these accounts have suspicious traits.

[7]
These Chinese-language tweets are not all linked to one or two events, but most are directed at Taiwan. Common targets on Twitter include Tsai Ing-Wen’s account, news about Taiwan, or news of PLA military exercises to intimidate Taiwan.

[8]
If this initial analysis is reflecting a larger state-backed effort, it could indicate, for example, the PRC wants to create the perception--especially for Taiwanese--that there is a popular outpouring of Chinese support for military and genocidal action against Taiwan.

[9]
As mentioned previously, the trend seems to have taken off right around Tsai’s re-election. It’s possible the CCP wants to invoke greater fear of Chinese hypernationalism among the Taiwanese public in order to reduce support for Tsai’s state-building.

[10]
What I’ve found with limited time or access to large data sets is likely just part of the story. Hopefully this will spur others to dig further.

Ultimately @TwitterSupport is best positioned to look into whether the PRC is amplifying genocidal language on this platform.

[12]
Methodology:

Examining the 314 tweets with the phrase “留岛不留人” from the month of Feb 2020, I coded each as either advocating for the phrase or criticizing/responding to the phrase. To reduce bias, I coded each account before obtaining its score from Botometer.

[13]
Next I entered each of the 261 unique accounts into Botometer: https://botometer.iuni.iu.edu/#!/ 

Below is an example of what the tool returns back to the user. I recorded the scores for each account.

[14]
Because of the amount of time it takes to code and record data, I decided to only examine one month as a sample. So a shortcoming of this analysis is that it could be missing patterns in other months. An assumption is that the trend is similar from Jan-April 2020.

[17]
The image below contains some of the basic stats of the two groups (Advocacy v Response).

Here is a link to raw data I collected:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vqpnksxpskwzagk/Feb2020-data-set.xlsx?dl=0

[END]
Pinging some people who may want to see this follow-up analysis (pardon repeat @-ing you):

@WilliamYang120 @catielila @pybaubry
@audreyt @heguisen @jessicacweiss
@jessicadrun @JMichaelCole1
@lnachman32 @wearytolove
@MargaretKLewis @nathanattrill @tculpan
You can follow @KevinSlaten.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

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