Our analysis showed Liberal state MP Tim Smith was instrumental in making the #DictatorDan hashtag go viral.
It was in low circulation until May 17, when Smith created a Twitter poll asking whether Andrews should be labelled “Dictator Dan” or “Chairman Dan”.
Subsequent growth of #DictatorDan activity was driven largely by far-right commentator Avi Yemini and his followers, along with a key group for fringe right-wing politics in Australian Twitter.
Meanwhile, #DanLiedPeopleDied went viral later on August 12, sparked by another right-wing group led by a handful of outspoken members. This group managed to get the hashtag trending nationally.
This attracted Yemini’s attention. The same day the hashtag started trending, he posted seven tweets and seven retweets with it to his then 128,000 followers. A considerable increase in activity ensued.
Date Time
How COVID-19 polarised politics: #IStandWithDan versus #DictatorDan
A QUT study of two interrelated Twitter hashtag campaigns in relation to the Victorian Premier Dan Andrews’ handling of the COVID-19 second wave found the activity was driven by a “small, hyper-partisan core of highly active participants” and not bot accounts.
More than half of the top 50 Twitter accounts tweeting the anti-Dan hashtags qualified as anonymous “sockpuppet” accounts compared to one third of the #IStandWithDan accounts.
A sockpuppet account is defined as human-managed with fabricated or anonymous profile details, often created to support or critique a specific person or organisation, posing as an independent third-party unaffiliated with the main account operator.
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