Factions

Primer defines factions as groups of social media accounts that express a shared ideology, show a history of posting similar content, or that exhibit significant signs of coordination. Primer has developed sophisticated AI-based algorithms for automatically detecting factions, and these algorithms fuel our Social Narratives product.

Primer currently tracks 20 factions, including: Second Amendment Advocates, Russian State Amplifiers, Chinese Candidate Troll Accounts, Climate Advocates and Anti Vaxxers.

You can interact with factions from within the Social Narratives feature. When viewing a social narrative, for some narratives, you will see a "Faction Composition" section:

You can uncover information about each faction by viewing the faction details. This can be done from within a social narrative, under the "Faction Composition" section:

After choosing one of those selections, a pop-up box will appear and will provide a description of the faction, their influence, reach, alignment, VIPs, Platforms used and Media Diet & Top Links.

A faction’s influence is defined as the ability to spread narratives to other factions that do not already share their topical interest or ideology. Primer utilizes historical post engagement data to understand the path of influence for each faction.

Faction Reach is defined as the ability of a faction to spread its influence beyond neighboring factions and echo-chambers, to achieve mainstream virality.

Political Alignment is described as the degree to which a faction’s content generally aligns with the political left and right in the United States. International and non-U.S. factions may return anomalous results.

This metric highlights the top 4 platforms or channels used by the faction and therefore may not add up to 100%

These are the domains and sites that have been most frequently linked to in posts by users in this faction in the last 30 days.

These are defined a factions that are deemed similar in ideology and topical focus.

Please reach out to the team at [email protected] with any questions on our faction functionality.