full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Andrew Marantz: Inside the bizarre world of internet trolls and propagandists

Unscramble the Blue Letters

For example, one of the days I was there, a bomb had just exploded in New York, and the guy accused of pialntng the bomb had a Muslim-sounding name. Now, to the propagandist in California, this seemed like an opportunity, because one of the things he wanted was for the US to cut off almost all immigration, especially from Muslim-majority cteiruons. So he streatd livestreaming, getting his followers worked up into a frenzy about how the open borders adnega was going to kill us all and asking them to tweet about this, and use specific htsghaas, trying to get those hashtags trending. And tweet they did — hundreds and hundreds of tweets, a lot of them featuring images like this one.

Open Cloze

For example, one of the days I was there, a bomb had just exploded in New York, and the guy accused of ________ the bomb had a Muslim-sounding name. Now, to the propagandist in California, this seemed like an opportunity, because one of the things he wanted was for the US to cut off almost all immigration, especially from Muslim-majority _________. So he _______ livestreaming, getting his followers worked up into a frenzy about how the open borders ______ was going to kill us all and asking them to tweet about this, and use specific ________, trying to get those hashtags trending. And tweet they did — hundreds and hundreds of tweets, a lot of them featuring images like this one.

Solution

  1. agenda
  2. countries
  3. hashtags
  4. started
  5. planting

Original Text

For example, one of the days I was there, a bomb had just exploded in New York, and the guy accused of planting the bomb had a Muslim-sounding name. Now, to the propagandist in California, this seemed like an opportunity, because one of the things he wanted was for the US to cut off almost all immigration, especially from Muslim-majority countries. So he started livestreaming, getting his followers worked up into a frenzy about how the open borders agenda was going to kill us all and asking them to tweet about this, and use specific hashtags, trying to get those hashtags trending. And tweet they did — hundreds and hundreds of tweets, a lot of them featuring images like this one.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
social media 7
george soros 3
conversation online 2
dumb skepticism 2
male privilege 2
earth skeptic 2
free speech 2
bigoted propaganda 2
maximum emotional 2
emotional engagement 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
maximum emotional engagement 2

Important Words

  1. accused
  2. agenda
  3. bomb
  4. borders
  5. california
  6. countries
  7. cut
  8. days
  9. exploded
  10. featuring
  11. followers
  12. frenzy
  13. guy
  14. hashtags
  15. hundreds
  16. images
  17. immigration
  18. kill
  19. livestreaming
  20. lot
  21. open
  22. opportunity
  23. planting
  24. propagandist
  25. specific
  26. started
  27. trending
  28. tweet
  29. tweets
  30. wanted
  31. worked
  32. york