The Assault on Modern Democracy – Tom Nichols Twitter
Tom Nichols Twitter -This article looks at Tom Nichols’ book Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault on Modern Democracy, and the role of Twitter in these disinformation operations. I’m a huge fan of Nichols’ work, and highly recommend it. His views are a breath of fresh air in our jaded, leftist culture.
Our Own Worst Enemy
Tom Nichols is a professor of national security affairs at the US Naval War College. In this provocative book, he examines the decline in civic virtue that has led to dangerous illiberalism. Nichols argues that our own worst enemy is us.
While liberal democracies have long had to defend themselves from external forces, they are now facing ideological threats from within. Right-wing authoritarianism is on the rise, while many people are willing to give up their rights. Nichols provides a sober analysis of the problem.
Disinformation operations on Twitter
Several years ago, the United States became a victim of the Russian government’s disinformation operations on Twitter. These efforts were coordinated and automated, giving the appearance of widespread anti-regime protests. In addition, these actions have resulted in the creation of hundreds of accounts in a day.
These accounts had similar goals when they first appeared on Twitter. Only about 30 percent were targeting new issues and operating under different guidelines. As a result, the accounts involved in the Russian government’s disinformation operations were identified as such. Nonetheless, despite these efforts, the Russian government continues to deny any involvement in such activities.
Twitter topics that are related to the candidates Trump and Clinton were more likely to be categorized as anti-Trump than pro-Clinton topics. This anti-Trump bias was not unrelated to the IRA’s efforts to target the United States presidential election. Instead, it is a clear indication that the Russian government is working to discredit Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
The corpus of tweets in this dataset includes topics ranging from race politics to immigration and refugees. There is also an increased number of tweets with emotive language, indicating that the Russian government may be trying to increase the fear factor among American citizens. These tweets are also likely aimed at raising tensions between different factions.
The Twitter corpus is the first level of analysis that reveals a number of Russian-linked accounts. The corpus includes 200,000 tweets from 3,814 accounts. The corpus does not contain all the content linked to the Russian Federation, but it does contain many tweets with IRA-linked content.
His book
Tom Nicholas is a footballer, writer, and researcher. He came through the academy system of Exeter City and made his first-team debut in May 2011. He earned a doctorate from Oxford University and has worked as a columnist and lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the London School of Economics.
