Influence of social bots in information warfare: A case study on @UAWeapons Twitter account in the context of Russia–Ukraine conflict

Abstract

During the Russia–Ukraine conflict, social media has become an outlet for public opinion; therefore, besides the hot war, information warfare is also taking place. It was discovered that a large number of new social bot accounts had emerged on Twitter since the outbreak of the conflict. In particular, the Twitter account @UAWeapons has grown its following by hundreds of thousands in fewer than 30 days and has established itself as an influential opinion leader. Through data mining and three different analysis methods, this study investigated how social bots grew to influence public opinion. Specifically, time-series analysis revealed an unusual pattern of “pulsing” changes in the number of tweets posted by @UAWeapons over time. The content analysis illustrated that the account posted biased tweets in favor of Ukraine under the guise of being a neutral messenger, which led to frequent retweets from social bots with similar opinions. Finally, the results of the social network analysis indicated that @UAWeapons’ rapid growth might be attributed to a strategy of network clustering implemented by a core group of social bot accounts.