mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Toxicity in State Sponsored Information Operations

arXiv 2507.10936 ↗First posted 15 Jul 2025cs.SIcited by 2

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Abstract (arXiv)

State-sponsored information operations (IOs) increasingly influence global discourse on social media platforms, yet their emotional and rhetorical strategies remain inadequately characterized in scientific literature. This study presents the first comprehensive analysis of toxic language deployment within such campaigns, examining 56 million posts from over 42 thousand accounts linked to 18 distinct geopolitical entities on X/Twitter. Using Google's Perspective API, we systematically detect and quantify six categories of toxic content and analyze their distribution across national origins, linguistic structures, and engagement metrics, providing essential information regarding the underlying patterns of such operations. Our findings reveal that while toxic content constitutes only 1.53% of all posts, they are associated with disproportionately high engagement and appear to be strategically deployed in specific geopolitical contexts. Notably, toxic content originating from Russian influence operations receives significantly higher user engagement compared to influence operations from any other country in our dataset. Our code is available at https://github.com/shafin191/Toxic_IO.

Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 15 Jul 2025.

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