(Bloomberg) -- Dividing U.K. Twitter users over Islam is the primary tactic of Russian trolls, a research group said, based on analysis of 9 million tweets.
Figures released Thursday by the cross-party U.K. Demos think tank showed a St. Petersburg troll factory generated far more tweets about Islam than about Brexit, despite initial public concern over foreign interference in the 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union.
Demos used a Twitter-released data set of 3,841 blocked accounts affiliated to a group called the Internet Research Agency, which a 2017 U.S. cross-government report described as a “troll farm.”
The study also showed how accounts were “camouflaged” in the early years after they were created in 2011, tweeting mainly about fitness and exercise to appear authentic.
To contact the reporter on this story: Kitty Donaldson in London at kdonaldson1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Stuart Biggs
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