It’s a (Russian) trap! Negative tweets about The Last Jedi movie were Russian bots - report

A new report analyzing online reaction to the Star Wars: The Last Jedi movie has identified an interesting and questionable culprit behind some of the negative tweets posted about the film: Russian bots and trolls.

In a paper titled “Weaponizing The Haters,” researcher Morten Bay looked into “the strategic politicization of pop culture through social media manipulation” and examined the online response to the Last Jedi movie, which received notoriously mixed reaction from the Star Wars fanbase.

But the negative reaction apparently was not simply the result of some fans enjoying the movie while others were less enthused. No, no. That would be far too straightforward. Indeed, Bay suggests that at least some of the negative reaction may have been fake news — and that the Russians could be partly behind it. In the report, Bay claims to have found “evidence of deliberate, organized political influence measures disguised as fan arguments”.

Now, if you’re wondering why Russia would care about the Twitter reaction to a Star Wars movie, you’re probably not alone — but Bay has some thoughts on that. The “likely objective” of these kinds of political measures against Star Wars would be to increase the media coverage of the “fandom conflict” thereby “further propagating a narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society”.

Bay claims that persuading American voters that such dysfunction exists in society is a “strategic goal” for the the alt-right movement and the Russian Federation, he claims.

The paper categorizes the negative reaction to the movie into three sections: people with a political agenda, trolls and “real fantagonists” — the phrase Bay uses to refer to real Star Wars fans which were genuinely disappointed by the movie, but don’t have a political agenda.

He found that more than 50 percent of the negative tweets about the movie were “likely politically motivated” or perhaps “not even human” (Wookie, Twi’lek?) —  and that only 21.9 percent of the tweets about the movie overall were negative. But of those negative reactions, “a number” of them “appear to be Russian trolls,” Bay writes.

Bay also says that rather than any new effort by the Lucasfilm production company to politicize the franchise, it is likely the “the polarization of the Trump era” that has politicized the fan reaction to the more recent films. “The divisive political discourse of the study period and the months leading up to it, has likely primed these fans with a particular type of political messaging that is in direct conflict with the values presented in The Last Jedi,” he writes.

Last Jedi director Rian Johnson tweeted that he was looking forward to reading the paper, but said so far “what the top-line describes is consistent with my experience online.”

Russian “bots” were also out to have their say on Star Wars last year, launching a “coordinated effort” (according to Johnson) to ensure that the villainous General Armitage Hux survived in the Last Jedi movie.

The reality was a little less sinister, however. It turned out that it was real people rather than bots who wanted to save Hux, with one of them telling RT they were simply determined to keep the character played by Domhnall Gleeson “for the entire trilogy”.

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