It is becoming increasingly important to understand Twitter as a public space that facilitates political discourse.
Unfortunately, this space is often under attack by organized groups that try to abuse the functionalities of the platform for purposes of spreading political propaganda. This kind of organized behavior goes against Twitter’s terms of service, but it is very hard to detect using conventional, automatized efforts and the network itself is doing too little to help suppress it—especially on a market as small as Slovenia. Combined with the lack of proper legislation it is becoming imperative that civil society helps with the oversight and watchdog efforts.
Project Twitter brigades will connect experts in the field of data mining (Danes je nov dan) and investigative journalism (Pod črto) in order to perform an analysis of the Slovenian Twitter network. The results of the analysis will be interpreted and presented in the form of a publicly accessible piece of investigative journalism, published online on the Pod črto website. The results of the analysis will also be forwarded to Twitter along with a takedown request for the abusive profiles.
The removal of the propaganda network from the political discourse on Twitter will help quell the inflamed political atmosphere, facilitate a more civil and fair debate, and offer existing and potential new users of the network a less discriminatory environment for public expression of opinion and thought.
All the policy markers are relevant in this project because part of the political discourse on Twitter is also hate speech, directed directly towards (or against) women, Roma and other vulnerable groups.