The viral hashtag campaign #ReleaseTheMemo appears to have been driven at least in part by a swarm of Twitter accounts set up in the past week, a CNN analysis has found.
More than 1,000 accounts that were set up between Thursday — when the hashtag first appeared — and Sunday night have tweeted the hashtag. 460 of those were what are known as “egg accounts,” accounts that don’t even have a profile picture. About 200 of the accounts had sent only four or fewer tweets by Sunday night, with at least one of those featuring the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag.
The memo in question is a document spearheaded by Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. It details what it alleges are FBI surveillance abuses during the 2016 election. While some Republicans and Trump supporters in the House and outside of it want the memo to be made public, Democrats say it’s misleading, and an effort to torpedo special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign.
Software developed by the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy showed that #ReleaseTheMemo was one of the talking points being pushed most frequently on Thursday and throughout the weekend by a group of Twitter accounts it believes to be part of “Russian-linked influence networks” on the platform.
…….
- Discussion
-
The viral hashtag campaign #ReleaseTheMemo appears to have been driven at least in part by a swarm of Twitter accounts set up in the past week, a CNN analysis has found https://t.co/KW9Vmz1wJU pic.twitter.com/pAvQRlCB8k
— CNN (@CNN) January 25, 2018
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.