MIAMI, United States. – The independent Cuban media specialized in data journalism Inventory Project posted this monday a report that demonstrates how the Cuban regime uses its medical aid workers in Venezuela to manipulate trends on Twitter.
The journalistic report analyzes the call and the results of a tweet called by the Plaza de la Revolución on the occasion of Raúl Castro’s 91st birthday, on June 3.
Specifically by analyzing the similarities between the tweets published that day by members of Cuban medical brigades in Venezuela and an order that circulated internally in the days prior to the celebration of Raúl Castro’s birthday on Twitter, Inventory He pointed to the manipulation of Cuban aid workers and social networks, in this case Twitter, by the Miguel Díaz-Canel regime.
“Publications of accounts of medical aid workers and other Cuban missions in Venezuela provide evidence that these personnel receive orders through internal channels, such as WhatsApp chats, to artificially promote official tendencies,” indicates the independent media.
He also assured that to monitor and control participation in these campaigns, the Cuban Medical Mission in Venezuela used the Talkwalker tool, which is worth at least 9,600 dollars a year; and violated their terms of use, which prohibit using their services to monitor individuals and groups of people.
Inventory was able to reconstruct the tweet organized by the Cuban regime thanks to the screenshot of the instructions received by WhatsApp by one of the Cuban doctors in Venezuela.
The instructions not only indicated what to publish but also underlined the need to participate “with great intensity” in “the intense day” scheduled for Friday, June 3 to “celebrate the 91st birthday of Army General Raúl Castro Ruz.”
Likewise, it stated that the label for the occasion would be #RaúlForever, which could be accompanied by others such as #CubaPorLaVida and #CubaCoopera.
In accordance with Inventory“the #RaúlPor Siempre tag was promoted jointly by several communities of accounts, mainly by users related to the Cuban Medical Mission in Venezuela (@CubaCooperaVen), and by accounts that are part of the propaganda tag amplification networks promoted daily by the Cuban government.
Likewise, the media concluded that “on the day of the tweet, the accounts linked to the medical mission showed a behavior very similar to that of the orders in the leaked message. In fact, they started doing it days before. In the early hours of Monday, May 30, the hashtag #RaúlPorSiempre –which had not been used on Twitter since May 17–, reappeared in the account of an unidentified user, and that same day in the afternoon it was taken up again in a call made by a collaborator of the Cuban Medical Mission in Venezuela”.
“From a few dozen tweets between Monday and Tuesday, the label continued to gain strength to a couple of hundred as of Wednesday the 1st. June (the day the order was leaked), until the cyberfestive Friday reached about 29,000 tweets, of which about 10,000 fulfilled WhatsApp’s orders to the letter”, according to what was indicated. Inventory.
Here you can read all the research of Inventory Project
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