Social media platforms have become key tools for coordinated influence operations, enabling state actors to manipulate public opinion through strategic, collective actions. While previous research has suggested collaboration between states, such research failed to leverage state-of-the-art coordination indicators or control datasets. In this study, we investigate inter-state coordination by analyzing multiple online behavioral traces and using sophisticated coordination detection models. By incorporating a control dataset to differentiate organic user activity from coordinated efforts, our findings reveal no evidence of inter-state coordination. These results challenge earlier claims and underscore the importance of robust methodologies and control datasets in accurately detecting online coordination.
@article{arxiv.2502.17344,
title = {Beyond Interaction Patterns: Assessing Claims of Coordinated Inter-State Information Operations on Twitter/X},
author = {Valeria Pantè and David Axelrod and Alessandro Flammini and Filippo Menczer and Emilio Ferrara and Luca Luceri},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.17344},
year = {2025}
}