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Almost all of the ten most active Brexit Party supporters on Twitter appear to be automated bots, according to new research.

Leader Nigel Farage has hailed the swell of support for the group as “the most amazing grassroots support that’s ever been seen in this period of time in British politics.”

But while bots were also found promoting other parties, Nigel Farage’s group had the largest number of suspected automated accounts promoting them.

A study by the Institute for Strategic Discourse identified the ten most active accounts discussing the Brexit Party using their official handle.

The think tank found eight out of the top ten most active accounts showed signs of automation.

(Image: AFP/Getty Images)

Five of the top ten accounts mentioning the Brexit Party on Twitter were producing more than 144 tweets per day, an average of one tweet every 3.3 minutes over an eight hour period.

Bots also appear to be heavily promoting Ukip, with six bot-like accounts in their top ten Twitter accounts.

Other parties are affected, but not to the same exent.

Out of the top ten most active accounts mentioning their official Twitter handles Labour , the Green party and the Conservatives have no bot-like accounts promoting their party in the top ten most active accounts mentioning them, and the liberal democrats only have one.

Eight of the top ten accounts mentioning the Conservatives showed bot-like behaviour - but they were all engaged in criticism of the Tories.

(Image: AFP/Getty Images)

There’s no suggestion any of the party are responsible for or aware of the bots.

The ISD identified bot-like behaviour based on suspicious levels of activity and anonymity.

They examined the identified accounts and discounted any which appeared to be genuine individuals, removing them from the data set.

Many of the most active Brexit Party supporting accounts were also engaged in ‘hostile activity’ towards other parties.

One pro-Brexit Party account is the third most active overall, tweeting an average of 648 times a day. It is also the ninth most active mentioning Change UK, generally posting critically of the anti-Brexit party.

One bot-like pro-Remain account was found actively targeting the Labour party with hostile activity. The account, which posts 427 times a day, doesn’t appear to be a supporter of any particular party, but is particularly critical of Jeremy Corbyn , whom it brands a “traitor” and a “hypocrite”.

(Image: Reuters)

Jacob Davey, Research Manager at the ISD, said: “In the run-up to the European Elections, the Brexit Party has been performing well online, posting content which is gaining a lot of likes and shares.

“However, when we looked more closely at the social media accounts mentioning the party we noticed that the majority were behaving strangely – the content was being posted at a massive rate, and the ‘people’ sharing didn’t look like real people at all.

“This suggests that the accounts might be automated in some way, and are acting like bots.

“This is important – as it points to the fact that the Brexit Party’s great online performance is in part being driven by dodgy tactics.

“These accounts aren’t only working to amplify the Brexit Party’s message, they are also involved in targeting their political opponents.

“This shows how the rules for political campaigning are changing.

The sort of dirty tricks which we saw being tried out by Russia during the US elections are now being adopted across the board.

“These tactics are dangerous as they distort what we see online and pollute our social media environment, and need to be taken seriously.”

A Twitter spokesperson said: "Proactive challenges of accounts for spammy behaviour and platform manipulation have decreased by 17% in the second half of 2018 versus the first half, totalling 194 million challenges in the second half of 2018.

"Approximately 75% were subsequently automatically removed after failing our account challenge process.

"This is due to a range of factors, including our increased emphasis on detection of malicious activity at signup — stopping bad actors from ever getting to the stage of Tweeting — and positive external trends affecting the volume of this activity targeting Twitter.

"Aggregate reports of these types of behaviour have also decreased in the second half of 2018, suggesting that people continue to experience fewer spammy interactions on Twitter.