Right-wing U.S. Twitter influencers, Chinese followers, and Guo Wengui

Accounts belonging to Steve Bannon and Congressman Paul Gosar were among those that quickly gained thousands of Chinese-language followers in 2020 or 2021

Mar 20, 2023

On multiple occasions over the last few years, popular right-wing U.S. Twitter accounts have gained large numbers of Chinese-language followers. Although these followers show little evidence of automation or obvious signs of inauthenticity (at least, to researchers who lack the ability to read Chinese), they do have one interesting thing in common: they promote content from websites connected to recently-arrested Chinese billionaire and Steve Bannon associate Guo Wengui, chiefly GNews.org. The prominent U.S. Twitter accounts followed by these Chinese-language accounts include U.S. Representative @DrPaulGosar (R-AZ), @WarRoomPandemic (a suspended account associated with Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast), Bannon’s daughter @maureen_bannon, and right-wing alternative social media platform @GETTRofficial.

follow order by creation date plot for @DrPaulGosar, colored by primary account language — one day you’re a dentist, the next day you’re a Republican congressman getting spam-followed by foreign Twitter accounts

In late March and early April 2020, U.S. Representative Paul Gosar’s personal Twitter account @DrPaulGosar gained roughly a thousand followers, 981 of which were accounts that mostly tweet in Chinese. (Gosar’s account also experienced a sudden influx of Portuguese-language followers in late November 2020, which largely tweeted in support of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.) After YouTube, the website most frequently shared by the Chinese-language Twitter accounts following @DrPaulGosar was Steve Bannon/Guo Wengui project GNews.org.

table of websites most frequently linked by Chinese accounts that followed @DrPaulGosar — this table (especially the presence of GNews.org) is representative of the Chinese-language followers of the other accounts mentioned in this article

bar chart showing the proportion of each 10K @WarRoomPandemic followers that tweet in English vs Chinese — many of @WarRoomPandemic’s early followers tweeted primarily in Chinese

In 2019, U.S. political operative Steve Bannon launched a new podcast called “War Room”, and in February 2020 he created an accompanying @WarRoomPandemic Twitter account (suspended in November 2020). The podcast and associated Twitter account provided (among other things) misleading coverage of topics such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 U.S. presidential election. By late October 2020, the account’s audience had ballooned to over 100000 followers. A significant fraction of the account’s first 80000 followers were Chinese-language accounts (12409 of 64045 followers with publicly visible tweets, or 19.4%). The @WarRoomPandemic account’s tweets also received significant amplification from Chinese-language accounts: as of October 18th, 2020, Chinese-language accounts made up roughly 18% (4909 of 27204) of the accounts that had recently retweeted @WarRoomPandemic.

table and bar chart of primary languages of accounts that retweeted @WarRoomPandemic — most English-language podcasts about U.S politics don’t get much attention from Chinese-language accounts, but @WarRoomPandemic was an exception

follow order by creation date plot for @maureen_bannon — unusual follower growth is apparently a Bannon family tradition

Steve Bannon wasn’t the only member of the Bannon family whose Twitter account gained thousands of Chinese-language followers in 2020. Roughly three-quarters of his daughter Maureen Bannon’s (@maureen_bannon) first few thousand followers were accounts that mostly tweet in Chinese. This follower growth was extremely rapid - roughly 6000 new followers in the first two weeks of October 2020, shortly before the U.S. presidential election.

follow order by creation date plot for @GETTRofficial, colored by primary account language — nothing to see here, just a social media platform for U.S. conservatives that has lots of Chinese-language followers

In July 2021, former Donald Trump aide Jason Miller, with the involvement of Guo Wengui, launched the social media platform GETTR, a Twitter-esque social media website marketed to U.S. conservatives in search of a Twitter alternative. As was the case with Bannon’s @WarRoomPandemic account, many of GETTR’s Twitter account @GETTROfficial’s early followers were Chinese language accounts that frequently shared links to GNews. The presence of the Chinese accounts was even more obvious in @GETTROfficial’s amplification: two-thirds of the accounts that retweeted @GETTROfficial between June 19th and August 19th, 2021 were accounts that tweet primarily in Chinese.

daily retweet volume for @GETTROfficial, colored by primary account language of retweeting account — nothing to see here, just a Twitter alternative for U.S. conservatives being promoted by Chinese-language Twitter accounts

collage of tweets recently retweeted by at least 200 of the Chinese-language followers of @DrPaulGosar/@WarRoomPandemic/@maureen_bannon/@GETTRofficial — these accounts are evidently displeased by Guo Wengui’s arrest

Of the 18117 Chinese-language followers discussed in earlier in this article, 15506 are still online, with the remainder either deleted by their operators or permanently suspended by Twitter. 14942 of these 15506 accounts have publicly visible tweets, and 6146 have tweeted within the last four weeks. Interestingly, one of their current favorite topics is the recent arrest of Guo Wengui, which these accounts appear to be unhappy with, based on the content that they’ve been retweeting.

Much of the research in this article originally appeared in several Twitter threads by @ZellaQuixote and myself; these threads are linked throughout the article where relevant.

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