{"id":4213,"date":"2019-03-18T11:03:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-18T11:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dfcme.me\/?p=4213"},"modified":"2022-10-22T20:49:36","modified_gmt":"2022-10-22T18:49:36","slug":"fake-followers-on-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dfc.me\/en\/fake-followers-on-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"“Fake” followers on Twitter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The use of social networks, such as Twitter,\nhas significantly changed the interaction in the politician-voter relation. In\nthis manner, the officials have become more available to the public, but, on\nthe other hand, the use of Twitter in political purposes has enabled faster\nexchange of important information. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This analysis, in the context of fake news and\nTwitter, deals with the phenomenon of \u201cfake\u201d followers among the most prominent\nactors of the political scene on the Western Balkans, who have own accounts on\nthis social network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For such purposes, we used one of the company\u2019s\ntools SparkToro<\/em><\/strong>, which deals with these types of assessment based on\nthe common methodology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their Fake Followers Audit<\/em><\/strong> combines around 25 factors which are, among others, in correlation with \u201cspam\u201d and bot accounts in order to provide the assessment of the followers, i.e. \u201cfake\u201d followers by analyzing the combination of the factors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Some of the factors used by Fake Followers Audit <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Prominent actors of the political scene, and whose accounts have been analyzed, are the presidents and prime ministers of the Western Balkans countries, except in the case of Montenegro, whose President and Prime Minister do not use this social network. Hence, we decided to analyze the leader of Pokret za promjene<\/g><\/em> party \u2013 Nebojsa Medojevic, as the most active Montenegrin politician on Twitter. When it comes to Bosnia and Herzegovina, only one of the current three members of the Presidency has an account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As it is presented on the chart, the Prime Minister of Albania \u2013 Edi Rama, with 332.902 followers and the President of Serbia \u2013 Aleksandar Vucic, who is followed by 288.173 people, have the greatest number of followers on Twitter. The President of Croatia \u2013 Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic is in the third place, followed by \u201conly\u201d 114.519 accounts. However, although they have a great number of followers, the significant part of them are \u201cfake\u201d followers, which is supported by the data we have found out. In the case of the Albanian Prime Minister, out of 332.902 followers 267.986, i.e. 80.5% are \u201cfake\u201d. The similar situation is with Serbian President. Out of 288.173 followers at the moment of conducting this analysis, 231.403, i.e. 80.3% are categorized as \u201cfake\u201d. On the other hand, Montenegrin MP \u2013 Nebojsa Medojevic and Prime Minister of Kosovo have the most favorable relation of \u201ctrue\u201d and \u201cfake\u201d followers. Medojevic is followed by 12.525 followers, out of which 36.3% are \u201cfake\u201d accounts, while out of 8.026 accounts that follow Haradinaj 36% are \u201cfake\u201d. When it comes to Montenegro, the MP Nebojsa Medojevic is followed by 12.525 followers, out of which 4.547, i.e. 36.3 are fake. Out of 14.572 accounts that make Twitter followers’ base of the Prime Minister of Macedonia Zoran Zaev, 6.543, i.e. 44.9% are fake accounts. On the other hand, when it comes to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bakir Izetbegovic is the only one having a Twitter account, out of the three members of the Presidency, and is followed by 4.180 followers, out of which 50% of them are “fake” accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fake accounts (most often the bots) have the ability to automatically generate and post a content of the most likely non-verified rumours and disinformation, all with a view to deceiving the social media users.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The use of social networks, such as Twitter, has significantly changed the interaction in the politician-voter relation. In this manner, the officials have become more available to the public, but, on the other hand, the use of Twitter in political purposes has enabled faster exchange of important information. This analysis, in the context of fake […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4890,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-our-work","category-disinfo-cases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfc.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfc.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfc.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfc.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfc.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dfc.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfc.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfc.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfc.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfc.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}