Hi Everyone,
As you may have heard, Australia had a terrible wildfire season in late 2019 and early 2020.
What we call bushfires burned out an 18.6 million hectares (46 million acres) causing 34 human deaths, the destruction of thousands of homes and the loss of an estimated 1 billion native animals.
During the crisis, many conservative politicians and commentators claimed that many of fires were caused by arsonists, rather than climate change and related matters.
I was intrigued by this article from two IT academics, who identified a misinformation campaign that by bots and trolls during the fires (see https://theconversation.com/bushfires-bots-and-arson-claims-australia-flung-in-the-global-disinformation-spotlight-129556 ).
They found the hashtag #ArsonEmergency was only tweeted a few times in 2019 but "gained traction this year in a sustained effort by about 300 accounts".
Their findings are well illustrated in an accompanying graph reprinted which shows that 4,726 #ArsonEmergency tweets on January 7 at the height of the fires.
Their work helped add context to the coverage of the fires. They held the government and elements of the media to account for running a largely anecdotal line about arson. (Note: some media outlets gathered detail from state police and fire services, forces which showed a limited number of fires being started by arson rather than lightning strikes.)
The article used software tools that I have never used - including tweetbotornot, Botometer, and Bot Sentinel – and the authors said it was difficult to get behind the bot accounts.
Perhaps this made it more difficult tofind characters in the data. It could also have been made more interactive, through having a location breakdown.
Mark Skulley