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"title": "Defenders of the Gupta realm: South Africans join the bots and find all the usual suspe",
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"description": "Daily Maverick is an independent online news publication and weekly print newspaper in South Africa.\r\n\r\nIt is known for breaking some of the defining stories of South Africa in the past decade, including the Marikana Massacre, in which the South African Police Service killed 34 miners in August 2012.\r\n\r\nIt also investigated the Gupta Leaks, which won the 2019 Global Shining Light Award.\r\n\r\nThat investigation was credited with exposing the Indian-born Gupta family and former President Jacob Zuma for their role in the systemic political corruption referred to as state capture.\r\n\r\nIn 2018, co-founder and editor-in-chief Branislav ‘Branko’ Brkic was awarded the country’s prestigious Nat Nakasa Award, recognised for initiating the investigative collaboration after receiving the hard drive that included the email tranche.\r\n\r\nIn 2021, co-founder and CEO Styli Charalambous also received the award.\r\n\r\nDaily Maverick covers the latest political and news developments in South Africa with breaking news updates, analysis, opinions and more.",
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"contents": "<p class=\"p1\">By Friday, Fraser told <i>Daily Maverick</i>, he had become so irritated by the Gupta bots over on Twitter that he decided to track them to determine if there were any discernible patterns. Assisted by <a href=\"https://twitter.com/marc_smith\"><span class=\"s1\">Marc Smith, </span></a>director of the <a href=\"http://www.smrfoundation.org/\"><span class=\"s1\">Social Media Foundation,</span></a> Fraser produced on Monday two graphs representing various clusters of Twitter users and which he posted on his Twitter account <a href=\"https://twitter.com/Arfness\"><span class=\"s1\">@Arfness</span></a>.</p>\r\n<p class=\"p1\">The only pattern to the untrained eye appears to be the zealous activity of several clusters of or groupings based on algorithms tracking popular hashtags or phrases (no prizes for guessing which these might be).</p>\r\n<p class=\"p1\">It is no surprise then to learn that some of the usual Zuma/Gupta praise singers topped the list tracked by Fraser, including Mzwanele Jimmy Manyi and Andile Mngxitama as well as the newly-established WMC Leaks account which popped up in May as amaBhungane, Daily Maverick<i>,</i> and other media began to publish the damning contents of the #GuptaLeaks trove.</p>\r\n<p class=\"p1\">Of course the names of individuals and media the Gupta bots target relentlessly also feature, including Ferial Haffajee, Peter Bruce, Pravin Gordhan, Johann Rupert and Sam Sole.</p>\r\n<p class=\"p1\">You can explore Fraser and Smith's results <a href=\"https://nodexlgraphgallery.org/Pages/InteractiveGraph.aspx?graphID=110444#headerTopTweeters%20\"><span class=\"s1\">here</span></a> and <a href=\"https://nodexlgraphgallery.org/Pages/Graph.aspx?graphID=110446\"><span class=\"s1\">here</span></a>.</p>\r\n<p class=\"p1\">The graphs are interactive and list top hastags, top tweeters, top tweets as well as top domains and URLs.</p>\r\n<p class=\"p1\">Fraser and Smith's Gupta bot graphic comes as South Africans celebrated a minor victory over UK based global spin doctors <a href=\"https://twitter.com/BellPottinger\"><span class=\"s1\">Bell Pottinger </span></a>on the weekend when a barrage of complaints from South Africans forced the PR firm to lock it's Twitter profile. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>DM</b></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>Photo: Fraser and Smith's Gupta bot graphic.</i></p>",
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