Study claims 60-80% accounts tweeting on Russia-Ukraine war could be bots

A research by scholars from the University of Adelaide, Australia has found that between 60 and 80 percent of Twitter handles posting on the Russia-Ukraine war may be bot accounts that have been pushing people to flee their homes during the conflict between these two countries.

The researchers studied 5.2 million posts including tweets, retweets, quotes and replies to the tweets to understand how bot activity may influence online discussions around the Russia-Ukraine conflict and how bots may influence human emotions.

The researchers also found more “pro Ukraine” accounts than those that were “pro Russia”. Joshua Watt, one of the researchers, said, “We can say that between 60 percent and 80 pe cent of accounts tweeting the hashtags we studied during the first two weeks of the war were bots, as determined using the Botometer.”

He added, “We cannot conclude where this is happening due to having no geographical information on the origin of accounts. All we can conclude is that the bot accounts are influencing more discussion surrounding moving/fleeing/going or staying in a country/location.”