Pro-Brexit social media community in Britain gets support from abroad: experts

Analysts of the Finland-based Data Security provider F-Secure have discovered international efforts to support those in favor of Britain leaving the European Union, the company told media on Wednesday.

Between last December and February, F-Secure analyzed 24 million Tweets from 1.65 million accounts that included a mention of Brexit. They found that two most popular pro-Brexit Twitter influencers received a disproportionate number of retweets, as compared to the pro-remain influencers.

Finnish national radio Yle quoted on Wednesday senior F-Secure researcher Any Patel as saying their research indicates at least that there is "a global effort" underway to support the message of those supporting Brexit.

In the company's News from the Lab blog, Patel noted that the scope of the report is too limited to conclusively determine whether or not there is "a coordinated campaign under way" to manipulate the public or the political climate surrounding Brexit.

F-Secure found out the pro-leave group relied on support from a handful of news sources that the researchers defined as "non-authoritative". A significant number of accounts based outside Britain were involved in the pro-leave conversations and retweet activity.

Analysts noted that while both the pro-leave and pro-remain camps exhibited "inorganic" or "non-human" activity, this activity was far more evident in the pro-leave group.