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Original document was submitted as an honors thesis requirement. Copyright is held by the author.

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

Twitter is a new platform in which politics and social engagement has found a home. Due to this a new medium to propagate a message has emerged that is unlike traditional platforms of propaganda. I hypothesize that traditional tactics of analyzing propaganda are no longer sufficient. I conducted an 8 week study cataloguing tweets that contained either the hashtag #falseflag or #hoax that were based on current topics in the United States. In total I retrieved 128 tweets. I first analyzed these tweets through the seven traditional tactics of propaganda and found that they were only present in 51% of tweets, and therefore no longer a sufficient classifier of propaganda. I propose six new characteristics of Twitter propaganda that create a model to determining if a message includes propagandist material. These characteristics include: (1) a call to action, (2) questioning a proposed or accepted argument, (3) questioning a person’s authority or an authoritative power, (4) evidence given or a proposed argument, (5) a call to a person, and (6) placement of blame.

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