Written under a copier, and the post - state employees: the media explored the comments of the Russians about the war in Ukraine
Thus, more than 600,000 VKontakte, written on top techniques, were found by data analysis. "We have studied 1. 3 million posts" VKontakte "in support of war in Ukraine. Almost half is written under a copier, and they are usually taught by state employees. Groups of identical posts are almost always published by people from the same region," the newspaper writes. The authors of the publication have unloaded more than 1.
3 million posts with a major hashtags in VKontakte and analyzed them through machine training. According to the most accurate estimates, almost half of them (616 thousand, or 45%) are written under a copier, that is, the text to the word coincides with at least two other posts. According to the publication, such posts are usually published by packs, on average, the number of posts with identical text - 10 pieces. The total number of unique texts that users copied is 59 thousand.
The largest group of the same post -war posts published in one day, which was found to be found by journalists, is 775 pieces. They were placed on May 29, 2022, continuing to publish in the next few days, so their total number reached 1140 posts. They contained the following text: "They met in 2 months. All this time they knew nothing about each other. Mariupol's families who divided Ukrainian shelling unite volunteers.
After that, the text was a hashtag er with the number or name of the region (for example, #erlenite or #ER01). In total, 102,000 users wrote from the sample of the New Newspaper Europe. Of these, the same posts are 26 thousand. Most of these profiles, writes a resource, are not at all like fetics or bots - at least a dozen friends, there are a photo that often can see the letter of Z or Russian flag, filled pages. Journalists also checked whether these users write the same comments.
It turned out that so does 6%. Journalists have found that there are people who have published thousands of run posts a year and a half from the beginning of a full -scale invasion. The winner of this parameter was the municipal deputy of the city of Volgograd from "Unified Russia" Vladimir Bolshakov, who published 9574 posts in support of war. According to the coordinator of Free Russia Foundation Anton Mikhalchuk, if such activity is not factories of trolls, then most likely state employees.
"According to recurring reports, you can see state employees: they all write posts with greetings, with the mention of some officials," he explains. Analysis users) at times greater than among the authors of random posts - a control group with which journalists compared their data. In budgetary institutions 67% of copypipers, 51% of authors of unique post -war posts and only 15% are among the authors of random posts. Such a number of state employees.
Among the authors of unique posts that are not repeated from other users, it suggests that many of them were also written at the top of "from above. " Both posts rarely write on the weekend, and with the same posts, this difference is especially noticeable. This gives an additional argument in favor of the writing of the post -war posts is rather part of the work than a personal initiative, " - the authors of the publication came to the conclusion.
Most of them read the messages and ignored it, several people answered "no" to the question of whether they received instructions on publications in VKontakte, and several people immediately blocked journalists. In the number of guidance publications with a large separation, Kuzbas (Kuzbass region): 76% of clusters of the same posts specific to the regions written by users from there. The population of the Kemerovo region in their own is only 1. 8% sharp peaks.
Each peak is a group of identical posts, all of which are written by users from the Kemerovo region in one day. "Some regions are clearly bent," says the source of "New and Europe" close to the Presidential Administration. In such cases, in his opinion, personal initiative comes from the governor of the subject. In the case of the Kemerovo region - from Sergey Tsyvillev.
Close to the PFR staff and the social insurance fund of Kuzbas, the Source told "Nova-Europe" that employees of budget organizations regularly ask to write motivational posts about the army and volunteers in "VKontakte" or "Classmates": social network, necessarily with hashtags and patriotic content. A list of certain persons who include volunteers or Kuzbass heroes, who should be for combat achievements, is provided.
As a rule, the head of the department comes and the request comes from, - the source says. Foundation Anton Mikhalchuk, to a full -scale invasion of RFFAs three main organizers of propaganda in Vkontakte - these are Prigogin Troll factories, AO "Dialogue" and the Kremlin administration, as well as "troll" at regional information policy. maintain an internal agenda. The trolls had the task of conducting information campaigns and igniting hatred.
The smarter AP strategies were aimed at maintaining the governor's rating or the PR of some candidate, ”he says. The anonymous leader of the Project "Cook Trap", who explores bots in the comments in VKontakte, says that the regional activity of "trolls" and "copypassters" has not changed much, but the absolute number of comments has increased twice or three times-now it is on average 20– 25 thousand a day, says the author of the project.
There is reason to believe that in most regions there is the same company from Moscow. Increasing the activity of bots and pro -government accounts often occurs before the election. This is also done to embellish public opinion so that people cannot express their true emotions and views. Most likely, budgets will be highlighted, there are multimillion -dollar amounts. And the more money is allocated for such work, the worse its result, - the expert sums up.