A selection of tweets that protesting Nike's Colin Kaepernick advert. Accounts with known links to Russia's ongoing disinformation campaign also joined the online protests, helping to broaden its reach Twitter/Composite

Since 2016, the eyes of the world have been on Colin Kaepernick. And, it turns out, so have the eyes of Russia's disinformation machine.

On August 14, 2016, American footballer Colin Kaepernick missed the San Francisco 49ers' first pre-season match against the Houston Texans, suffering from arm fatigue. As the national anthem played, Kaepernick remained sitting on the bench in protest at the oppression of black people in the US.


The protest was the first of many, with Kaepernick and other players subsequently taking the knee. "I think it's a terrible thing, and you know, maybe he should find a country that works better for him," said Donald Trump, who was running for president at the time.

The message clearly reverberated with his supporters. Pro-Trump accounts on Twitter helped to drive the campaign to boycott Nike once it named Kaepernick as the face of its Just Do It advertising campaign, new analysis shows.

Read next Trump’s TikTok battle heralds the ugly birth of a new splinternet Trump’s TikTok battle heralds the ugly birth of a new splinternet

Twitter activity around the protests also shows accounts believed to be linked to Russia's ongoing disinformation campaign helped to amplify the anti-Nike sentiment. "They were definitely participating in the Nike hashtag and in particularly driving it at the beginning," says John Kelly, the CEO of Graphika, a social media analysis firm that uses machine learning to monitor state-sponsored disinformation.

Graphika, which works with a number of companies in Silicon Valley, analyses connections between individual accounts on social networks and combines it with existing intelligence. Around the Nike protests the firm ran two separate analyses of hashtags being used on Twitter. The first scan, conducted within hours after Nike named Kaepernick as the face of its new advert on September 3, found around 7,000 to 8,000 accounts using the initial hashtags calling for a boycott of Nike.


Kelly says that around 12-18 hours later when the second scan was conducted there were more than 80,000 different Twitter accounts that had posted messages with the hashtags. The firm focussed on accounts that used the hashtags more than once.

In analysis seen by WIRED, Graphika found 47 hashtags within its first social media map that mentioned either Nike or Kaepernick. The most popular, with more than 10,000 usages was #nikeboycott. This was followed by #nike, #colinkaepernick, #boycottnike, #kaepernick and #dumpnikestock, which all had more than 1,000 uses. At the bottom of the scale – getting barely any traction with under 100 instances – were hashtags such as #nikesdead2me, #nikehatescops, and #istandwithnike.

At the time, a limited group of Twitter accounts used prominent hashtags alongside videos of images of them burning or destroying Nike products. A limited number of tweets led to widespread press coverage of protests.

Read next How QAnon took hold in the UK How QAnon took hold in the UK

The attempted boycott has worked out well for Nike. In the company's most recent quarterly earnings, reported on September 25, it reported a ten per cent year-on-year growth in revenues to £7.5 billion. Profits rose more than 15 per cent. Mark Parker, the company's chief executive, said that customers responded "quite strongly" to the Kaepernick advertisement.


"Like many campaigns, it's driving a real uptick in traffic and engagement, both socially as well as commercially," Parker was reported as saying by the BBC.

Graphika says Russian Twitter accounts targeted the Nike boycott but did not create it. The firm says once momentum had been gained the accounts it monitors looked to further boost its reach by tweeting about it. It did not provide details of the specific accounts but says they were "densely connected" to known Internet Research Agency accounts that have previously targeted the US democratic process. CNN has previously reported on Russian links to online criticism of Kaepernick.

"Our understanding of how the Russians work – not just in the American political environment but in Europe and elsewhere – is they embed these sock puppet assets into the natural political landscape of the country they are trying to influence," Kelly says. This works on different issues: pro-Trump accounts target Trump fans; other accounts have previously embedded themselves in the Black Lives Matter movement. "They will strategically, when it matters to the Russians, carry a Russian message and inject that agenda. But most of what they're doing is mimicry," Kelly adds.

Potential Russian accounts targeting the Nike boycott should not be a surprise, Kelly says, as overall the issue was politically divisive. Graphika's analysis says the Nike boycott was largely pushed by Trump's online supporters. These accounts were densely connected to each other – in its first analysis of tweets 66.1 per cent of #nikeboycott hashtags were used by pro-Trump accounts as were 58 per cent of #boycottnike uses.

Read next We asked TikTokers why they’re pretending to be Holocaust victims We asked TikTokers why they’re pretending to be Holocaust victims

The company defined the second largest group tweeting about Nike and Kaepernick as being a "resist" group. Graphika says the online movement spread, this group grew from 18 per cent of hashtag uses to 21 per cent and largely was reacting to the pro-Trump group.

Data from analysts at Brandwatch found that from September 2 to September 4 mentions of "Just Do It" increased by more than 3,460 per cent and Nike's overall online sentiment dropped after it released the ad. "#NikeBoycott and #BoycottNike have more than 462 million and 710 million impressions respectively," Kellan Terry a data analyst at the firm wrote in a blog post. "#TakeAKnee, a hashtag supporting Kaepernick’s cause that circulated during last year’s NFL season, has accumulated more than 136 million impressions," Terry added.

Separately, Kelly says he was surprised to see members linked to the QAnon conspiracy theory getting involved with the Nike boycott activity. QAnon, which started in October 2017, was alleged to be a 4chan user (going by the name of Q) which had inner knowledge of the American government. Supporters of the movement are largely Trump fans or people with right-wing views. However, during the Nike boycott, the activity highlighted by Graphika appeared to be supportive of Nike. It says the political connotations of this aren't obvious.

More great stories from WIRED

– Inside the hunt for a huge mystery planet in our solar system

– The science of how to hack your brain to remember anything


– The free school that innovated itself to death

– How the very meaning of being human will change by 2050

Don’t miss out. Sign-up to WIRED Weekender to get the best of WIRED in your inbox every weekend