Online Reaction to the Death of Alexei Navalny, Russian Opposition Leader
Investigating chatter about Alexei Navalny’s death using Open Measures’ Truth Social dataset
TLDR
The death of Alexei Navalny was announced by the Russian government on February 16, 2024. From there, online communities picked up the news story.
On February 19th, Donald Trump took to Truth Social to make a statement on Navalny, using the occasion to draw attention to issues in relation to US domestic politics.
Trump’s post appears to have kicked off a spike of interest in Navalny on the Truth Social platform, indicating that the former president’s activity may have a significant and identifiable impact on the conversation on the platform.
We looked at the top Navalny-related links shared on Truth Social around the time of his death and found that users most shared two links. The first is a conspiracy-laden news roundup-style video in which Navalny is called a Western intelligence asset. The second link is one in which Trump compares himself to Navalny because of his legal troubles; Trump himself shared this link on the site.
Background
On February 16, 2024, the Russian government announced the death of Alexei Navalny, a prominent opposition leader and activist. Navalny died in Russian custody while serving out a multi-year prison sentence. Amnesty International had designated Navalny a prisoner of conscience and stated that he “[had] not been imprisoned for any recognizable crime.”1 Navalny’s death was confirmed by his spokesperson the following day. Navalny’s public funeral was held on March 1, 2024 and conducted under a heavy police presence.
Many Western governments have publicly indicated that they hold Russian president Vladimir Putin responsible for Navalny’s death. Western ambassadors and diplomats attended Navlny’s Moscow funeral with many world leaders making public statements to hold Putin to account.
Navalny’s career in activism and anti-government work spanned decades and included organizing major public protests against the regime, running for mayor of Moscow in 2013, and attempting to run in the 2018 presidential race. He was also the target of politically-motivated criminal investigations throughout his career and survived being poisoned – likely by the Russian government – in August 2020. In January 2021, Navalny returned to Russia where he was arrested.
Following the news of Navalny’s death, many major US political figures released public statements sympathetic to the activist. On February 16, 2024, Joe Biden made a statement accusing Putin of being responsible for Navalny’s death and using the opportunity to call for additional funding for Ukraine.2 That same day, Speaker Mike Johnson claimed that Putin was “likely directly responsible” for Navalny’s death and highlighted the need to bolster security in Ukraine and the Baltic countries.3 Nikki Haley – still in the race for the Republican presidential nomination at the time – similarly blamed Putin for Navalny’s death and called attention to Donald Trump’s silence on the issue on February 17, 2024.4
Given Navalny’s prominence, the media attention on his death, and the highly political nature of issues involving Russia and Ukraine in the US, Open Measures researchers examined what the chatter about Navalny’s death looked like on the US-based site Truth Social.5
Analysis of Online Chatter
Truth Social is a Twitter-esque microblogging site created by Trump Media & Technology Group. It markets itself as a “Big Tent” social media platform with a focus on free speech. This openness has at times enabled neo-Nazi, white nationalist, and online disinformation campaigns. It is also one of the most recognizable of the major alt-tech platforms in the US landscape; according to a November 2022 poll by Pew research, 27% of Americans had heard of Truth Social.
Donald Trump on Truth Social
The most prominent personality on Truth Social by far is Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump), with over 6 million followers. As indicated by Nikki Haley’s February 17 statement, Trump did not remark on Navalny’s death in the days immediately following the news. The presidential candidate’s first public statement on the incident was on February 19, 2024 – three days after the news of Navalny’s death first broke – in the form of a post on Truth Social.
The full text of the post reads as follows:
The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country. It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction. Open Borders, Rigged Elections, and Grossly Unfair Courtroom Decisions are DESTROYING AMERICA. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION! MAGA2024
The post uses Navalny’s death as a lens to examine US domestic politics, mentioning specifically “Open Borders, Rigged Elections, and Grossly Unfair Courtroom Decisions”; these are likely references to the current migrant crisis, Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent, and the many court cases currently underway involving the former president. Notably, the post makes no mention of Putin and does not indicate who may be responsible for Navalny’s death.
In addition to this above “truth”(the Truth Social term for a tweet), Trump has referenced Navalny’s death only one other time on the platform. On February 21, 2024, Trump shared a link to a story from Mediaite[.]com with the headline “Trump Calls $354 Million Fraud Fine Against Him ‘A Form of Navalny.’”
Overall Chatter about Navalny’s Death on Truth Social
Open Measures researchers were interested in understanding more about the general conversation on Truth Social about Alexei Navalny around the time of his death. To do this, we used Open Measures’ Truth Social dataset and examined data from the day before the announcement of Navalny’s death until March 4, 2024, a few days after Navanly’s public funeral.
Chatter about Navalny appears to have had two primary peaks. The first is on February 16, 2024, the day Navalny’s death was announced by the Russian government. This tracks with what we might imagine seeing with any social media platform in response to breaking news.
The second peak was on February 19, 2024, the same day that Donald Trump commented on Navalny’s death on Truth Social. We wanted to understand whether this spike in mentions about Navalny on February 19, 2024, can be more closely correlated to Trump’s statement on the platform.
Going into Open Measures’ Truth Social dataset, we were able to find information about the post created by Donald Trump. This reveals to us that Trump’s February 19, 2024 truth was posted at 08:04 am EST.
From here, we can see how that truth is situated within the general chatter around Alexei Navalny. We decided to look at mentions of Navalny on Truth Social from February 18, 2024 (the day before Trump’s post) to the end of the day on February 20, 2024 (the day after Trump’s post). In order to understand the impact of Trump’s tweet with more granularity, we configured the graph to return hourly activity levels.
There is a clear increase in activity mentioning Navalny starting around 08:00 AM (12:00 UTC) on February 19, 2024, the same time that Trump posted about Navalny. This suggests that Trump’s activity on the platform may be a powerful driver of conversation.
After February 19, 2024, there was a steady decline in mentions of Navalny on the platform, failing to noticeably increase even on March 1, 2024, the date of Navalny’s funeral.
Top Individual Posters Talking about Navalny’s Death on Truth Social
For our investigation, we wanted to identify the users who most engaged with content related to Alexei Navalny on TruthSocial. For this, we consulted Open Measures’ Activity tool. This public tool allows researchers to investigate which accounts are generating the most chatter about certain topics on various alt-tech platforms.
To answer our question, we decided to look at users on Truth Social who most frequently used the term “Navalny” in their posts between February 15, 2024 and March 5, 2024.
Our top poster mentioned Navalny 64 times in that time period, and the top 10 posters mentioned Navalny a combined 450 times. This data includes individuals who were “retruthing” (the Truth Social term for retweeting) information about Navalny.
We were also interested in identifying the top accounts generating unique posts (as opposed to retruths) about Alexei Navalny. For this, we dove into the Open Measures Research Dashboard, which is available only to partnered clients. Other researchers can use this and any other query to conduct research using Open Measures’ dataset via the public API; be sure to set esquery = true.
We wanted to look at posts that mentioned Navalny but were not retruths. On Truth Social, all retruths have a “reply to ID” so we crafted the following query:
content_cleaned:"navalny" AND NOT in_reply_to_id: *
This query generated the following graph:
When looking at content related to Navalny that doesn’t include retruths, we see a mostly different set of top posters. It is therefore notable that a significant amount of chatter related to Navalny is being generated by accounts retruthing content created by others. Interestingly, the account “@yoyotabby” appears in both lists, indicating that they were generating an unusually high level of unique posts about Navalny. We decided to take a closer look at this account and its Navalny-related content. We did this by using the search query:
content_cleaned: "navalny" AND account.username: "yoyotabby"
Open Measures observed the “yoyotabby” account mainly copy-pasting replies to the same handful of accounts on Truth Social. We also observed the account demonstrating “burst” posting behavior – oftentimes posting the same thing multiple times in the span of just a few minutes. The account most frequently replies to “realDonaldTrump” followed by “DC_Draino”. Despite the burst posting, Open Measures researchers did not observe any inauthentic-appearing behavior.
Open Measures researchers also researched another top “Navalny” poster “@billybob1966.” Contrary to what may be expected, “billybob1966” appears to be pushing back against conservative messaging on Truth Social with regards to Navalny, expressing displeasure at Trump’s delayed reaction to Navalny’s death and drawing a clear contrast between Trump and Navalny. Some comments from billybob1966 include [quoted account usernames removed for readability]:
From February 16, 2024:
Take just a moment today and consider the contrast between Navalny and Trump.Courage vs cowardice.Leadership vs cheap politics.Love of country vs love of self.Kissing his wife goodbye upon arrest vs kissing Putin’s ass.
From February 18, 2024:
It's been 48 hours and Donald Trump still has not mentioned the death of Alexei Navalny. He had time to sell shoes, but he hasn't mentioned Navalny.
February 21, 2024:
When looking at the murder of Putin critic Alexei Navalny, Trump is NOT Navalny. Trump is Vladimir Putin. Please understand if Trump won in 2024, he would 100% arrest his critics and some will die in Jail. And MAGA will cheer their deaths. This is what we are faced with in 2024.
billybob1966’s activity is notable for being somewhat out of step with the majority of users on the platform and is useful to remind researchers that, while much of the content on these alt-tech platforms is explicitly right-wing, there are indeed a mix of voices engaging in conversation in these spaces. This kind of diversity of opinion found on alt-tech platforms will be an interesting line of future inquiry and worth further investigation.
Analyzing and Counting Links Shared on Truth Social
In addition to understanding who was talking about Alexei Navalny’s death on Truth Social, we were also interested in the news and media content that were shared. For this, we focused our research on the links that individuals were sharing about Navalny.
Open Measures’ Link Counter tool provides information on what domains are being posted across all of our thealt-tech platforms in our collections. We wanted to see which domains were being shared the most on Truth Social in posts that also mentioned Navalny from February 15, 2024 to March 5, 2024.
The top three sites being shared are:
Rumble: A Canadian alternative to YouTube that Open Measures also collects data from
The Gateway Pundit: A far-right news site that dabbles in conspiracy theories and hoaxes
Mediaite: Mediaite is a political news site
It is notable that the only mainstream news outlet that appears in the top 10 domains shared during this period of time is the conservative news network Fox News, coming in at number 9. The top sites also primarily serve content in English.
For more specificity, we took a look at the individual links that were being shared on Truth Social about Navalny during this time period. One can do that by using the Open Measures Link Counter tool and toggle “Only extract URL host?” off.
Two links were shared in much higher volume than any others: one from Rumble and another from the news site Mediaite[.]com. The Rumble link points to an hour-long news roundup-style video titled “2.19.24: SCANDALS revealed, will not go unpunished, MSM TDS is HUGE, Navalny, Fifth Column Pray!” from the account “And We Know.” Around the 35:25 mark they begin to discuss Navalny, stating Navalny was not a political dissident but rather a Western intelligence asset.
The second most shared link is a Mediaite[.]com link with the headline “Trump Calls $354 Million Fraud Fine Against Him ‘A Form of Navalny”; this is the same link that Donald Trump shared on Truth Social, once again showing his impact on discourse across the platform. There is little mention of Navalny himself in the article.
Conclusions
Our investigation found that chatter on Navalny’s death within Open Measures’ Truth Social dataset had two defined peaks: one following the announcement of his death, and another following Trump’s statement on the Truth Social platform. This indicates that Donald Trump is likely a major driver of conversation on the platform.
Other accounts posting about Navalny on Truth Social revealed interesting and diverse behavior on the platform, indicating the potential need for future research on Truth Social activity. One user, “yoyotabby,” can be seen copy-pasting replies and engaging in activity in bursts while another, “billybob1966,” takes a more centrist stance on the platform.
Between Trump’s continued resonance on the platform, a diversity of thought amongst profiles, and the spread of third party media content, our research indicates there is much more to be investigated on both Truth Social and other alt social networks. If there are areas you would like to see us investigate or would like to collaborate on future investigation, get in touch with us at info@openmeasures.io.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2021/05/statement-on-alexei-navalnys-status-as-prisoner-of-conscience/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/02/16/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-reported-death-of-aleksey-navalny/#:~:text=You%20know%2C%20like%20millions%20of,the%20Putin%20government%20was%20doing.
https://www.speaker.gov/speaker-johnson-statement-on-reported-death-of-alexei-navalny/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/17/us/politics/haley-trump-russia-navalny-putin.html
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/11/18/key-facts-about-truth-social-as-donald-trump-runs-for-u-s-president-again/