Hey #AcademicTwitter, I'm officially published! With @NATO @STRATCOMCOE, co-authored with @charleskriel, we give you 30 thrilling pages of network analysis of Russian IRA influence tactics, summed up in this 45 second time-lapse of the last decade: vimeo.com/305925342/d7a6… (1/)

A little sneak peak is below, and the full paper is here: stratcomcoe.org/ckriel-apavliu… (2/)

The paper traces the ups and downs of the IRA's operations on Twitter, from the #ColombianChemicals hoax in 2014 (central blue region of IRA user tweets to non IRA 'normal' people... (3/)

... to their "survival of the fittest" strategy, where they never again used the green/circled exercise-tweeting users after they failed to gain over 600 followers in 2015... (4/)

...to the polarized targeting of different users (see the opposing directions of the purple regions, high res image in article) during the 2016 US election, and the deployment of previously-automated blue trending-hashtag tweeting users during the election as well. (5/)

SO what does this bird's eye view of the IRA tell us? We believe that: Twitter didn't release all known IRA accounts as they claimed to, the IRA tested and iterated on many tweeting styles over the decade in attempts to find ones that would gain lots of followers, and that...(6/)

...the highly structured sections of the networks show that the IRA is extremely organized, sophisticated, and well-resourced, and that civil Western society should not underestimate Russia in any of their attempts to influence international democracies. (7/)

Finally, the reverse engineering of IRA tactics is paramount to understanding how foreign actors may attempt to influence democracies in the future, with important Canadian, UK, and Ukrainian (parliamentary) elections coming up this year alone. (8/8) #academictwitter #research