There is an ethnographic component to @katestarbird's insights about why GWP was a successful disinformation machine. GWP was quick to provide key frames for interpreting "evidence," but could also reframe an emerging conversation in real-time. https://twitter.com/katestarbird/status/1358419238201921537

Back in 2017, when lots of researchers were looking at bots as amplifiers, I turned to analyzing the culture of sharing among right wing audiences, who were excited to share news as political activism. This same dynamic we see with GWP was best exemplified by Breitbart in 2016.

Often blogs, tweets, youtube videos, and livestreams from right wing pundits would contain a plea to viewers, saying that their post was both secret and illicit. Therefore, the audience had a ROLE TO PLAY in making sure "the news" got out FAST.

On the center and left, sharing patterns do not have the same kind of illicit aura (as @OddLetters has written about), nor does news sharing rise to the level of a political action.

For conservatives, news distribution is adversarial, from print to cable and now social media.

In fact, concepts like clicktavism and slacktavism in the early days of indymedia tended to shame leftists who dwelled in the issues online, but didn't hit the streets. Even during Occupy, social media use was sometimes shamed as armchair activism.

Bottom line, these are patterns we can see and tactics we can name. GWP often relied on distributed amplification and the Streisand effect. Learn more about the tactics of media manipulation: https://mediamanipulation.org/case-studies/distributed-amplification-plandemic-documentary