Since Donald Trump’s election last November, stories about a Russian influence on western elections were brought by many stakeholders. The role of Russian media outlets such as Sputnik or Russia Today were also discussed. Let’s go back to the facts. Is this influence growing ? Who is spreading their news ? Did these media replace traditional media in some communities ? First answers with Brandwatch and Visibrain.
This study was first published in French by Nicolas Vanderbiest on his blog Reputatiolab. You can find a more complete version there. We apologise for any inaccuracy in this translation.
Learnings
Sputnik and Russia Today
Sputnik does not publish much about the Presidential Elections. On the contrary, Russia Today does it with some success because 145,017 people were reached by its publications. This figure is yet to be put in perspective because less than 15 000 people had interactions with both the Russian media outlets.
Russian propaganda representatives
Russian propaganda representatives gather around François Fillon, Marine Le Pen and François Asselineau (conspiracy, Frexit support) communities. It is interesting to note that, despite his support to the Russian foreign policy, far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon community is totally missing here.
Anonymous, mostly.
Around 90 % of the people interacting with these media are doing it under a nickname, which underlines serious interrogations about their real identity.
Russia Today and Sputnik do not replace other media
« Western » media are still shared a lot by the most active accounts identified, at least for Mr Fillon et Mr Asselineau communities. Regarding Mrs Le Pen, her supporters seem to almost only follow with « Eastern » media.
A shared enemy : Emmanuel Macron
These 3 communities clearly share the same goal: to drive negative propaganda towards Mr Macron. « Macron » is the most tweeted word in their publications and all the main stories propagated are negative articles about him. The only difference that can be identified lies in the candidate each community is supporting.
The first step of my investigation was to analyse the content published by Russia Today and Sputnik’s accounts. To be able to do so, I collected 2.5 month of online activity to see the content published and the users reached.
Sputnik
Russia Today
The second step of my work has been to gather frequent users in the RT and Sputnik communities. 14,792 accounts were active with both of the media outlets. If you only select people having 10 interactions with Sputnik and Russia Today, we decrease this number to 6006 profiles. I did focus on these profiles and study how they were following each other. The bigger a node is, the more he’s followed in this ecosystem of RT/Sputnik active users. The color goes with the community they belong to. We see there are 3 communities involved.
A community very close to Sputnik and Russia Today: Francois Asselineau and his party (UPR)
A republican community – François Fillon
A xenophobic/far right community – Marine Le Pen
Influencers inside these communities
We looked at the most followed people inside these communities. We find well-known stakeholders from the self-called « patriosphere » but also mainstream media, showing to what extent they also are a source of information inside these alternative communities.
The most active people
To be able to analyse the most active people, I set up a Brandwatch panel with the 100 users who were the most active with RT/Sputnik (more than 265 mentions or Retweets of these two medias). This panel also analysed their global online activity, not only the one directly linked to the elections.
Breakdown by community, on the French elections
Then, using Visibrain, I also analysed the content published inside the 3 communities I identified.
The most « Russian » community around Sputnik, Russia Today and UPR/Asselineau
Xenophobic/far right community – Front National
Credits:
Created with images by FirmBee - "twitter social media media" • Engin_Akyurt - "train wagon people"