A System to Study Anti-American Misinformation and Disinformation Efforts on Social Media

Misinformation and disinformation are two significant challenges of our century with societal, political, and economic implications. This study focuses on building a software system to investigate the role of social media in instilling anti-American sentiment among US allies through misinformation and disinformation efforts. Our system has four major components, which are executed stepwise: (1) Data collection, (2) Data handling, (3) Machine learning, and (4) Analysis. We designed and implemented this system for Twitter using the Python ecosystem. As a use case, we selected Turkey - a US ally and NATO-member country with notable support of anti-American views. We automatically translated the tweets into English and used sentiment and emotion analysis to determine support for or opposition to the USA. Then, we categorized people into bots and non-bots. From Jan 2019-Dec 2021, there were 11,988,406 Turkish tweets related to the USA. Our data showed several peaks, such as President Biden's inauguration day on January 20, 2021 and Biden's recognition of the Armenian Genocide on April 24, 2021. Turkish tweets against the United States are dominated by disgust, followed by anger and fear.