Hundreds of Twitter Accounts Linked to China Sowed Discord Around US Election

- THE EPOCH TIMES - Feb 1, 2021 -

TOM OZIMEK - CONTRIBUIÇÃO CÉSAR TONHEIRO -

This photo taken on Aug. 4, 2020, shows an unnamed Chinese hacker using his computer at their office in Dongguan in China's southern Guangdong province. (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images)

A sophisticated social media operation believed to be linked to China’s communist regime played a key role in spreading disinformation, sowing discord, and amplifying calls for violence during and after the November election, a report from Cardiff University has found.

The Crime and Security Research Institute (CSRI), an interdisciplinary unit at Cardiff University whose research aims to help “tackle local, national and global crime and security problems,” issued a two-part report on Jan. 27 (Part one – pdf, part two – pdf), which described a China-linked influence operation on Twitter that engaged with the presidential election and sowed discord.

The institute found that the network spread anti-American propaganda, sought to portray anti-communist sentiment in Hong Kong in a negative light, and amplified calls for violence before and after the Jan. 6 Capitol breach. While some of the Twitter messages the network pushed echoed the “themes used by the right-wing US ‘patriot’ communities in their messaging,” the “vast majority of the tweets referencing President [Donald] Trump were negative in sentiment,” the report found.

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https://www.theepochtimes.com/hundreds-of-twitter-accounts-linked-to-china-sowed-discord-around-us-election_3679956.html