In the 7th and last Democratic Debate, we analyzed a sample of Twitter data to measure the sentiment of twitter users about some of the top candidates for the presidency. This data was scraped from Twitter before and after the debate.
Some portion of the hashtags trending after the 1/15/2020 debate were created by "troll_bots," which are real people or twitter bots that share misrepresented or fake information on twitter. We gathered this data using Twitter's API and information from Bot_Sentinel.
Some hashtags are much more active with troll_bots than others. In our analysis, for #MAGA and #MAGA2020 over 30 percent of twitter users using this hashtags were troll_bots. For other hashtags, such as #NeverWarren, the number is lower at 2 percent.
Some of the most influential tweets shared by troll_bots are Trump's tweets. However, other high engagement tweets by troll_bots reinforce far right ideas and opposition to liberal politicians and activists.
The corrupted Dems trying their best to come to the Ayatollah's rescue.#NancyPelosiFakeNews pic.twitter.com/a0ksPHeXCy
— داون آندر (@D0wn_Under) January 13, 2020
BREAKING: @BernieSanders “free education” policies to “teach you how to not be a f**king nazi.”; 'There is a reason Stalin had Gulags'; 'Expect violent reaction' for speech. If Bernie doesn't get nomination "Milwaukee will burn"
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) January 14, 2020
Stay tuned: https://t.co/BFGnoCeJE7#Expose2020 pic.twitter.com/Koh6UTibbe
Facebook had a glitch that allowed users to see Greta Thunberg’s account was being run by her dad & a climate activist in India.
— Educating Liberals (@Education4Libs) January 13, 2020
Lmao....
This just confirms what we already knew - she’s a puppet who is being used by her parents & handlers to push a destructive global agenda.
These above tweets are a few examples of the content shared by troll_bots. The network of troll_bots that make up large portions of popular hashtags have tremendous influence in the spread of disinformation. Troll_bots are likely to influence the 2020 elections at least as much, if not more, than the 2016 elections.