Since the British government accused Russia of an “illegal use of force” against the United Kingdom by attempting to poison former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English city of Salisbury, Twitter has become a battleground.

Supporters and defenders of the Russian government have clashed over who was to blame, and which side to believe; politicians and diplomats have joined in on both sides.

Much of this invective appears organic, driven by angry users who are convinced that their cause is right; such storms are a regrettable part of everyday life online. Some incidents, however, appear to involve organized activity, including possibly fake accounts masquerading as English users, in the well-known pattern of the “troll factory” in St. Petersburg.

Pushing a poll

On March 17, when an apparently British user called @Rachael_Swindon posted an online poll asking whether the British government’s evidence was adequate to blame Russia. The poll returned a hefty majority in favor of “No.”

Archived on March 19, 2018. (Source: Twitter / @Rachael_Swindon)

The account which posted the poll is a vocal supporter of the UK’s Labour Party, a critic of the ruling Conservatives, and has a substantial following (almost 58,000, as of March 21). The fact that the poll received over 15,000 votes, mostly anti-government, was therefore not, in itself, remarkable.

What was remarkable was the origin of its amplifiers. Many of its most recent retweets — and, it is legitimate to assume, votes — came from accounts which are either Russian-language, or systematically post pro-Kremlin content.

This appeared to be an attempt by pro-Russian users to influence the online poll, and thus to create the appearance of greater hostility towards the UK government than UK users themselves showed.

Screenshot of the most recent retweets of the @Rachael_Swindon post, as of March 21, showing two Russian-language accounts among them. (Source: Twitter)

To assess the extent to which Russian or pro-Kremlin accounts helped amplify the tweet, we conducted a machine scan of its spread through multiple stages of retweeting, using the Sysomos online tool.