The Russia connectionRussian bots did “influence the General Election by promoting Jeremy Corbyn”: Study

Published 30 April 2018

An examination by Swansea University and the Sunday Times found that Russian government bots distributed thousands of fake posts on social media in the run-up to Britain’s election last June, aiming to help Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn win the election. He did not win, but still achieved unexpectedly good results for the Labor Party – results which defied predictions — in the process weakening Prime Minister Theresa May. The methodology of the Russian government’s pro-Corbyn social media campaign was similar to the Kremlin’s broad disinformation campaign to help Donald Trump win the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

An examination by Swansea University and the Sunday Times found that Russian government bots distributed thousands of fake posts on social media in the run-up to Britain’s election last June.

The Russian disinformation campaign was aiming to help Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn win the election. He did not win, but still achieved unexpectedly good results for the Labor Party – results which defied predictions — in the process weakening Prime Minister Theresa May.

The Sun reports that 6,500 Russian Twitter accounts rallied behind Labor in the weeks before the election, sending pro-Labor messages to hundreds of thousands of voters.

Matt Hancock, digital and culture secretary, said that any involvement in U.K. elections by Russia was “completely unacceptable,” and that his office would carefully look at the evidence the uncovered by Swansea University and the Sunday Times.

The methodology of the Russian government’s pro-Corbyn social media campaign was similar to the Kremlin’s broad disinformation campaign to help Donald Trump win the 2016 U.S. presidential election – and the campaigns Kremlin’s disinformation specialists conducted on behalf of Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and other far-right, populist politicians in Europe and Latin America.

Researchers say that what has been uncovered so far is merely the “tip of the iceberg,” and that more research is needed to find the complete scale of Russian involvement in British politics.

The Russian government hackers used feminine English names for their fake posts, and a linguistic analysis of the thousands of posts show that they all came from the same source.

The research found that 80 percent of the automated accounts had been created within the weeks before the 8 June 2017 election, and that Russian pro-Corbyn campaign ended on the day of the election.