In 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a network of accounts on Twitter, which had previously posted narratives friendly to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), switched their messaging to focus on the pandemic, attempting to portray government actions in response to the pandemic in a more positive light. The accounts, many of which exhibited the hallmarks of automation and inauthenticity, were also linked to a public relations firm in China, indicating they may have been created and operated by the company. This case study, written by ProPublica’s Jeff Kao, a computational journalist and data scientist, breaks down this campaign, highlighting the various tactics and network terrain used and the pro-CCP narratives that were seeded.
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