The Role of Suspended Accounts in Political Discussion on Social Media: Analysis of the 2017 French, UK and German Elections

Abstract

Content moderation on social media is at the center of public and academic debate. In this study, we advance our understanding on which type of election-related content gets suspended by social media platforms. For this, we assess the behavior and content shared by suspended accounts during the most important elections in Europe in 2017 (in France, the United Kingdom, and Germany). We identify significant differences when we compare the behavior and content shared by Twitter suspended accounts with all other active accounts, including a focus on amplifying divisive issues like immigration and religion and systematic activities increasing the visibility of specific political figures (often but not always on the right). Our analysis suggests that suspended accounts were overwhelmingly human operated and no more likely than other accounts to share “fake news.” This study sheds light on the moderation policies of social media platforms, which have increasingly raised contentious debates, and equally importantly on the integrity and dynamics of political discussion on social media during major political events.

How does Twitter account moderation work? Dynamics of account creation and suspension on Twitter during major geopolitical events

“…One possible explanation could be that the massive audience engaging in online conversations around the conflict consequently lured in a larger amount of malicious activity compared to the French election. These findings confirm previous work which showed peaks of suspensions [ 26 , 43 ] and a larger number of new accounts among those suspended [ 26 , 28 , 44 ].…”

“…Lastly, Majo et al [ 28 ] carry out a multi-country analysis of users who got suspended during political elections in 2017 in multiple countries (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom). They show how the behavior and content shared by Twitter suspended accounts are significantly different compared to other active accounts, as they focused more on amplifying divisive issues like immigration and religion.…”

“…To further our understanding of how these moderation strategies are enacted to tame abuse, here we study Twitter accounts’ creation and suspension dynamics. Existing research into suspended accounts on Twitter spans various settings, from political elections to social movements [ 26 – 28 ]: a limitation to these studies is that their analyses are retrospective, i.e., done by querying Twitter’s Application Programming Interface (API) with a considerable delay (sometimes years) with respect to the period of activity of observed users, hence preventing the determination of when and why accounts were actually suspended, information that are not disclosed by the platform. As labeled ground truth data about legitimate and abusive accounts is not always available, researchers typically rely on labeled datasets that emerged during audits or investigations into these platforms [ 29 ].…”

Discovery and Classification of Twitter Bots

“…In (Wei et al 2016) the authors analyze the characteristics of suspended users on Twitter and their impact on network stability, revealing that suspended users were more likely to be part of small communities and were less active than nonsuspended users. Authors in (Majó-Vázquez et al 2021) examine the role of suspended accounts in political discussions during the 2017 elections in France, the UK, and Germany, while they show that these accounts were more likely to be associated with political extremism and misinformation. Similarly, in (Chowdhury et al 2021) they examine the factors contributing to the suspension mechanism following the 2020 US presidential election by identifying several factors, including the use of certain keywords, the presence of bots, and the posting of misinformation.…”

Reducing “Golongan Putih” Activities in General Elections Abstention by Strengthening Citizen Participation and Involvement in Public Management

“…For example, studies in China (Chen, 2023; Kennedy et al, 2018) and England (Kandiko Howson & Buckley, 2020) use digital interactive methods; in Indonesia, political education is done by touching the grassroots to form political awareness. Good political education can increase the understanding and involvement of the people in Not only that, the intersection of the two (Majó-Vázquez et al, 2021) can create public discussions in policy forums that provide opportunities for the public to discuss political issues and consider diverse views. These public discussions can involve citizens in a deeper understanding of issues related to elections.…”