Digital Forensic Analysis by Augustine Fou

The first graph shows search interest in “mitt romney” over the period of June 25 – July 24, 2012. There is no discernible lift in interest around July 21, according to Google Insights for Search

The second chart below was generated by Twitter Counter and shows a dramatic increase of nearly 117,000 followers in 1 day, when the average number of adds per day over the same period was usually a steady 7,800 per day.

Something is not kosher. The spike happened on a Saturday, July 21. Saturdays and Sundays are usually the worst days to tweet according to a study by FastCompany.

Many of the followers listed on Romney’s twitter page have ZERO tweets, ZERO followers, etc. (see screen shot)

See at the bottom an example of the proliferation of “service” which help users buy thousands of followers at a time.