"Twitter Bomb" was used against Coakley by SBVT people

[karynnj]

In a paper published by Panagiotis Takis Metaxas and Eni Mustafaraj, the researchers examined more than 185,000 campaign-related tweets and retweets during the week leading up to the election, reports the Boston Globe.

"One of the more active accounts was one that was tied to the American Future Fund, a conservative organization based in Iowa that also ran television ads critical of Coakley," the Globe reported.

The researchers said a surge of more than 900 tweets in a two-hour period from accounts tied to the AFF spread misinformation about Coakley to Twitter users. This constituted an attack, the researchers argue, which they call a "Twitter-bomb."

Metaxas said in a press release that the researchers identified more than 60,000 people who received the messages on Twitter, and noted that real-time search on Google gave the tweets more prominence.

http://www.examiner.com/x-2398-Boston-Top-News-Examiner~y2010m5d4-Cyber-attack-Scott-Brown-supporters-used-Twitter-to-bomb-Martha-Coakley

Here is the Boston Globe article - http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2010/05/coakley_targete.html

In the course of the research, they found that one of the more active accounts was one that was tied to the American Future Fund, a conservative organization based in Iowa that also ran television ads critical of Coakley. But because messages were done anonymously through a social networking site, it would have been difficult for any voter to tie the messages to the group.

The firm apparently set up nine accounts that sent 929 tweets over the course of about two hours – a method the study refers to as a “Twitter-bomb.” Those messages would have reached about 60,000 people, according to the authors.

The research paper, “From Obscurity to Prominence in Minutes: Political Speech and Real-Time Search,” was presented last week at a conference in Raleigh, N.C. The paper, which won the conference’s Best Paper Award

The paper that the Boston Globe spoke of is here:
http://journal.webscience.org/317/2/websci10_submission_89.pdf

I was going to label this as OT, but realized that as Kerry had "truth fights back" and was the victim of the SBVT lies, this is on topic. In 2004, I always thought the toughest problem with the SBVT is that there was not one or even 10 charges, there was a cluster bomb with hundreds of lies. Kerry and his team would spend time and energy definitively proving that one was a lie - and the liars would shift to several others. Even after they disproved more than 100 lies, to many it looked like there still were questions.

It is sad that these sleazes so quickly figure out how to use each new technology to spread lies. A big question is how you deal with these types of attacks. It is very easy to see that the same creeps will do the same for 2010 races - especially when the Democrat is not super well known to everyone in the state or where he/she is even close to vulnerable.

Years ago, one of my daughters in choosing readings for her Bat Mitzvah, chose one that I remember now reading this. The story, took place in an eastern European shetl, where a man came to a rabbi asking how he should go about making up for having spread lies about a neighbor. The rabbi responded that he should take a feather pillow, cut it open and take it out into the wind ... and then collect all the feathers. The man looked at the rabbi as though he was crazy and said that there was no way to collect all the feathers. The rabbi pointed out that the same was true of the lies - he really could not "collect" all of them - and this was why spreading malicious gossip was such an evil thing to do and that he had to do his best to counter the lie he started. (I likely mangled the story, but the point is correct.)

Even then, before technology, the rapid geometric propagation of a lie meant it could not easily be spun in. Now this is on steroids.

[wisteria]

1. Of all of the Twitter bomb recipients, do they know how many actually could and did vote

against Cloakley?

This does however, serve as warning about the circulation of lies in the future. Because we all know that Republicans do not care about facts.

[karynnj]

2. I don't think the researchers would be able to take the

recipients and hit them against the voting lists. Even if they did, they would hit many people who were already intending to vote for Brown. You actually would want to do that as they might be the most likely to retweet the tweet. I have never seen any estimates of the reach of any of the chain emails, which is another way that this is done. (That likely would be impossible to assess - unless you are FISA, acting poorly :) )

The other thing this does is bring the accusation out in real life. Who knows how many people heard the content from a friend or neighbor. There were many negative stories that were circulating about cases she had and decisions she made - even here on DU. Her campaign was pretty lame, but a 31 point lead is hard to lose. You can't blame that 36 point swing on this.

(Kerry's race in 2004 on the other hand was close - the lies are one of many things that you could blame that if changed could have made the small difference)

[beachmom]

3. I guess I am puzzled as to how a "Twitter Bomb" would work.

The whole point of having Twitter is to create your own feed which would filter out the garbage you don't want to read. It bypasses Google search completely.

How did 60,000 people receive these messages?? There are a few ways they could have:

1. Trending topics (using hashtags, popular topics will end up on the front page for you to peruse. Of course, that election was probably a trending topic by the end, but it would contain ANY tweet from the campaign, including pro-Coakley messages). Of course, I NEVER click on trending topics, because then you have to sift through a lot of junk; it's like a very bad Google search.

2. Using search, someone on Twitter could search for a topic, but it is highly limited and not fun to use, just like clicking on trending topics.

3. Private messages. Someone can send you a message, but I am not reading in these articles that these messages were sent personally. Plus, researchers wouldn't have been able to track that.

4. This was a bigger conspiracy where very popular opinion leaders on the conservative side SPREAD these tweets. As in individual conservatives who had Twitter accounts, including people like Erick Erickson who have a lot of followers, REtweeted these messages.

Frankly, #4 is the ONLY way I know where you can influence the conversation. The only way to me that 60K saw those tweets is if one of their favorite journalists/pundits/bloggers re-tweeted those original tweets. Because who the heck was following these guys who suddenly set up accounts at the last minute? I suppose IF their stuff was being re-tweeted by Prominent Conservatives, and then people read the tweets, went to that Twitter account, liked what they saw then started following them, then THAT could act virally. But, gee, that is not my experience. I choose carefully who I follow, and damn: 900 tweets? Who would want to sift through that junk in their feed?

I'll try to read more from the other article, but without a conspiracy, I don't get how setting up Twitter accounts and doing a ton of tweets adds up to much.

[karynnj]

5. I agree with you that # 4 is the only way to build up to that number

But, that really means that the fact that it was "twitter" is irrelevant. Any method that would have spread a story to a small number of people like Erickson would have done the same thing. That reduces to what the right has long done well - all use similar talking points to create an echo chamber where people hear the same story repeated by seemingly independent (trusted by the listener) sources.

900 tweets would be a good reason to unfollow someone! I have yet to write a single tweet.

[beachmom]

4. Okay, I am reading the academic report, and here is some more info:

These Twitter bombers had NO followers. Instead, here is how it was spread:

They would type the message as an RT to a Twitter account user who would be sympathetic to the message (they picked these users probably by using alogorithms with key words). Then they would hope that that Twitter user would act on the tweet and re-tweet it. Some of them did, in fact, re-tweet. Contained in the message was a link to an anti-Coakley website (ultimately registered by the Swifty group) which would affect real time Google Search.

http://journal.webscience.org/317/2/websci10_submission_89.pdf

To me, this is pretty primitive, and involves two sets of stupid people:

1. Those conservatives dumb enough to re-tweet a spammer message (I mean, who would want to be caught spreading lies by an unknown source? Plus, the Twitter accounts were deleted fairly quickly, so they look doubly dumb now.)

2. Those dumb enough to believe via a Google search an unreputable source (the anti-Coakley website).

I would respect this whole thing more if it was a conspiracy. As a Twitter Bomb, I question how effective it was. Not only that, kids these days are becoming educated on how to be savvy in navigating the internet. At least with the SBVT, there were write ups in established media. This, OTOH, has no institutional authority to back it up. And as kids grow up, they will easily ignore this kind of spam. Also, I can imagine Twitter and Google doing something to prevent this from happening again, as they did after the 2006 election when mydd.com Google bombed some Republican candidates.