According to the newspaper La Stampa the storm of insults and threats to the President of the Republic in the days of maximum political tension, would have been pushed by a network of suspicious accounts.
The tsunami of criticism and invective that has hit the head of state (including harmful content and threats) touching the peak between Sunday and Monday past, has traveled mainly on twitter. A storm not entirely spontaneous, however. To unveil it is the print of Turin in a long article in which he explains how behind there would be a group of accounts, committed to amplifying this anomalous wave against the Quirinale, in the same hours when the M5s invoked the impeachment against Mattarella. The accounts, it is specified, have not shown connections with any official party, nor do they seem to be due to foreign interference, however the scenario that is described clearly speaks of an operation aimed at manipulating public opinion. The revelation of the newspaper is based inter alia on the report of two computer scientists who used an algorithm developed to identify the digital propaganda, starting from three three hashtags in particular (#mattarelladimettiti, #impeachment and #impeachmentmattarella):
- "We are not talking about bots or trolls - write the authors - but about" suspicious accounts ": this is because in such a highly complex scenario, indicating an account as a bot or troll is difficult to prove, especially in a very digital propaganda ecosystem. discussed ". The main reason is simple: "If we indicate the account @ marioRossi232323 as a bot, because its profile characteristics and its contents or actions demonstrate automations, whoever manages the alleged bot, a human being, could take control of it instantly and start to use it personally, thus trying to prove the groundlessness of a research ». Accounts generated by software can then easily "animate", ie be operated by humans. -
Later in the article the two IT analysts then explain in detail the criteria used in the research and how the phenomenon of digital propaganda is constantly changing, just to escape the checks and the risk of being discovered (for example "trying to pulverize and blend in as much as possible with natural social accounts"). Another indicative aspect is the recurrence of the classical anti-establisment themes from sovereignism to ultra-nationalism, also passing through social issues such as no-vax. The intent is always the same: to divide and polarize public opinion, trying to move it at least partly to increasingly radical positions. The cybersecurity of Twitter (as of other social networks) has long sought to intervene, for example with temporary limitations and restrictions, but the phenomenon, concludes the article, is now a reality with which to deal even in Italy. An insidious comrade to keep more and more present in today's political agora.