Abuse of Power: Coordinated Online Harassment of Finnish Government Ministers

978-9934-564-97-0 !%^#@ D!@ B@*h F*%# ABUSE OF POWER: COORDINATED ONLINE HARASSMENT OF FINNISH GOVERNMENT MINISTERS Published by the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence ISBN: 978-9934-564-97-0 Project manager: Rolf Fredheim Authors: Kristina Van Sant, Rolf Fredheim, and Gundars Bergmanis-Korāts Copy-editing: Anna Reynolds Design: Kārlis Ulmanis Riga, February 2021 NATO STRATCOM COE 11b Kalnciema Iela Riga LV1048, Latvia www.stratcomcoe.org Facebook/stratcomcoe Twitter: @stratcomcoe This report was completed in November 2020, and based on data collected from March to July 2020 This publication does not represent the opinions or policies of NATO or NATO StratCom COE. © All rights reserved by the NATO StratCom COE. Reports may not be copied, reproduced, distributed or publicly displayed without reference to the NATO StratCom COE. The views expressed here do not represent the views of NATO. PAGE LEFT BLANK INTENTIONALLY The main topics triggering abusive messages were the COVID-19 pandemic, immigration, Finnish-EU relations, and socially liberal politics. Executive Summary This report is an explorative analysis a period spanning the state of emergency of abusive messages targeting Finnish declared in response to the COVID-19 ministers on the social media platform pandemic.1 Twitter. The purpose of this study is to understand the scope of politically This report is informed by the findings of motivated abusive language on Finnish three recent Finnish studies, one of which Twitter, and to determine if, and to what investigated the extent and effects of online extent, it is perpetrated by inauthentic hate speech against politicians while the accounts. To this end, we developed a other two studied the use of bots to influence mixed methodology, combining AI-driven political discourse during the 2019 Finnish quantitative visualisations of the networks parliamentary elections. The first study, delivering messages of abuse with a released by the research branch of the Finnish qualitative analysis of the messages in government in November 2019, found that a order to understand the themes and triggers third of municipal decision-makers and nearly of abusive activity. We collected Twitter half of all members of Finnish Parliament data between 12 March and 27 July 2020, have been subjected to hate speech online. 1 Finland declared a state of emergency on 16 March 2020 that was in force for three months until 16 June 2020, although the Emergency Powers Act remained in force through the end of June. 4 �� The two studies tracking inauthentic activity languages and either not generally focused during the 2019 parliamentary elections on Finland or used to push certain causes identified bot interference but concluded in multiple languages. We repeatedly came that the impact of these bots on Finland’s across a cluster of accounts throughout political environment appeared limited. Based our monitoring period that posted the same on these findings, and on our comprehensive messages about animal cruelty and climate literature review, we developed two change. These accounts predominantly post hypotheses: in English and appear in some cases to be automated or semi-automated. However, 1. We expect to observe abusive they represent a very small part of the language targeting Finnish conversation. Likewise, a small cluster of politicians, with female politicians automated accounts amplified messaging by receiving gendered abuse; a number of right-wing voices. Again, there was a degree of coordination here, but these 2. We expect to observe low levels amplifications looked more like attempts of coordinated inauthentic activity at self-promotion rather than systematic in the Finnish information space, manipulation of the information space. If with increased levels of inauthentic large-scale inauthentic coordination exists activity during periods of political in the Finnish information environment, we significance. are either looking in the wrong place, or it is so sophisticated or so small in scale that it Our quantitative and qualitative analyses evades our detection methods. confirmed both hypotheses and yielded multiple findings. Our investigation We found that the main topics triggering demonstrated that the messaging directed abusive messages were the COVID-19 at Finnish government officials is largely pandemic, issues of immigration, Finnish- free from automated activity. When it comes EU relations, and socially liberal politics. to abusive messaging, we find a number of We observed that female Finnish ministers users singularly focused on harassing the received a disproportionate number of government. While both left- and right-leaning abusive messages throughout our monitoring communities engaged in abusive activity, the period. A startling portion of this abuse bulk of abusive messaging originated from contained both latent and overtly sexist clusters of right-wing accounts. language, as well as sexually explicit language. Although we found large volumes Overall, we observed very low levels of both of offensive and abusive messaging, we did bot and coordinated activity. The majority of not observe threats of physical violence. bots we identified were operating in foreign �� 5 Social media has become an essential platform for political engagement, granting citizens unprecedented access to their government representatives. Introduction Lipstick brigade. Lipstick girls. Feminist challenges for states navigating the complex quintet. Tampax team. These are all phrases relationship between freedom of speech and used on Twitter to refer to the current coalition protection from harmful discourse, as online in Finland, in which all five party leaders are hate speech and abusive messaging have women, led by Prime Minister Sanna Marin become increasingly recognised as socio- of the Social Democratic Party. When the political issues. Social media has become an remarkably young and female leadership essential platform for political engagement, came into power in December 2019, they granting citizens unprecedented access to made international headlines as pioneers of their government representatives. Twitter gender equality in governance. Their election in particular has provided candidates and also provoked online resistance in the form of constituents with an informal channel of abusive messages. Many assumptions about communication, through which citizens can their political inexperience were accompanied share feedback and politicians have the by sexist and misogynistic language. ability to engage with these concerns directly. Social media platforms provide individuals However, this unfettered access to politicians with virtually limitless opportunities for online, combined with the anonymous communication and self-expression. This nature of social media platforms, has led potential, though transformative, has raised to government officials being targeted with 6 �� abusive messages. This virtual vitriol can in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and take many forms: it can be threatening, several weeks after it was lifted. misogynistic, racist, vulgar, and so on. For governments, online harassment is a The report is structured as follows. The growing concern, as it can have the effect of literature review engages with the scholarly discouraging participation in public service, literature discussing definitions and particularly among women. Simultaneously, methods of detecting abusive language on the rise in fake account activity in online social media platforms, abuse of politicians political discourse is equally concerning, online, misogyny online, and the use of bots as recent examples highlight the impact for political purposes on Twitter. Having inauthentic activity can have on public established this framework, we will describe opinion and political participation. our methodological approach for analysing the data, which combines social network This study is an analysis of how abusive analysis, bot detection, hate speech detection, messaging intersects with the activity of fake and narrative analysis. This combination of Twitter accounts in the political sphere. In quantitative and qualitative approaches is this explorative analysis, we will be focusing designed to identify instances when accounts on the state of politically motivated online coordinate to send abusive messages to abuse in Finland. Specifically, we will be politicians. The study continues with a social analysing messages directed at Finnish network analysis that informs the basis of the ministers between 12 March and 27 July qualitative analysis. We conclude our study 2020, encompassing the three months with a discussion of our findings, conclusions, Finland maintained a state of emergency and policy recommendations. �� 7 The Proliferation of Online Abuse Defining hate speech and abusive (Waseem et al, 2017) and is the most language frequently used phrase for describing the phenomenon of insulting user-generated The concept of hate speech, considered content (Schmidt and Wiegand, 2017). an umbrella term for abusive user-created Broadly, hate speech is defined as any content, does not have a single formal communication that disparages a person definition. Rather, hate speech is

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