The reports are based on a seven month investigation by the OII and The Associated Press (AP), and represent a global audit of social media activity by PRC diplomats and state-backed media outlets. Altogether, according to the research, PRC diplomats tweeted 201,382 times, averaging 778 times a day for a nine-month period. But, despite high levels of activity by PRC diplomats on social media, their user accounts are rarely labelled as such. For example, on Twitter only one in every eight PRC diplomat Twitter accounts is labelled as government-affiliated. Future research should build on that, but every day social media users can also contribute by carefully checking what information they are consuming or amplifying while using these platforms.’
