An American Neo-Nazi. Image via Wikimedia Commons
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Researchers were much more successful at pinpointing bona fide extremists when they examined how users interacted with each other. First, they measured users’ “influence” on Twitter by looking at how many times their tweets were favorited or retweeted. Those of the original pool who were most influential were more likely to be overt white nationalists. Among 100 most influential, 86 percent had self-identified themselves as such or had tipped their hand through their tweets."Twitter users from the original pool who were both highly influential and highly responsive were almost always dyed-in-the-wool extremists."
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