Users are claiming that restricted access to social media has led to fewer Russian “bots” and that left-leaning pages are performing better than right-leaning pages as a result. 

On Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok, content is circulating comparing Facebook’s “top-performing link posts” in February, before the invasion, and March, after the invasion, as evidence of this supposed phenomena. While the “top-performing link posts” are often dominated by content from right-leaning pages, the list can fluctuate and include more examples from left-leaning pages, even as there is no change to the broader trends of performance.

Since January 1, the trend in posts and interactions for news and politics pages has not changed substantially, with right-leaning pages earning more interactions than left-leaning or ideologically nonaligned pages nearly every day. 

In fact, average interactions per post actually increased for each set of pages in the 19 days since the invasion compared to the 19 days before it. Following Russia's attack, the average for left-leaning pages increased from 1,476 to 2,174 interactions per post, ideologically nonaligned pages increased from 425 to 558 interactions per post, and right-leaning pages increased from 1,408 to 1,453 interactions per post.

Media Matters has repeatedly documented over the years the balance in the total number of posts made and interactions earned by right-leaning, left-leaning, and ideologically nonaligned pages on Facebook, with nonaligned pages posting the most and right-leaning pages earning the most interactions. Between January 1 and March 14, this trend has continued — including after the invasion — as right-leaning pages have dominated interactions earned on posts from news and politics Facebook pages. In fact, right-leaning pages earned nearly 550,000 interactions, or 42% of total interactions earned on posts from news and politics pages, while ideologically nonaligned pages made over 60% of posts.

Users found it notable that certain right-leaning pages that are routinely counted among the highest performing political pages on Facebook failed to break through on several days in March. However, Media Matters analyzed the activity of two such pages — those for Ben Shapiro and Breitbart — and found that they continue to earn hundreds of thousands of interactions each day. In fact, Shapiro’s page has earned nearly 14.5 million interactions on its posts (nearly 8,000 average interactions per post) since the invasion, and Breitbart earned nearly 8.4 million interactions (nearly 10,000 average interactions per post) during the same time frame. 

In addition to looking at the overall balance of interaction trends among right-leaning, left-leaning, and ideologically nonaligned pages, Media Matters also analyzed data about several narrative trends among key right-wing culture war topics a to see if there were any notable shifts following the Russian invasion -- whether they could be attributed to inauthentic activity or otherwise.

Since the beginning of 2022, right-leaning pages on Facebook have dominated both posts and interactions related to topics such as critical race theory, LGBTQ issues, parents’ rights, and more. Between January 1 and March 15, right-leaning pages have earned over 13.3 million interactions on more than 6,200 posts related to these issues. These posts accounted for over 66% of all posts related to these issues from politics and news pages and nearly 73% of interactions.

Notably, our study found no substantial changes in the level of right-leaning conversation or in previous established patterns. If anything, posts and interactions from right-leaning pages actually experienced an increase. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the percent of interactions earned on posts related to culture wars from right-leaning pages has actually been higher, with the pages accounting for more than 77% rather than the over 71% in the 19 days before the invasion. Given the right-leaning dominance, and the widely acknowledged importance of such topics as wedge issues in the American electorate, a decrease in artificial activity on Facebook would portend a significant dropoff in these “culture war” posts or interaction trends.

One sign of inauthentic behavior on a given topic is a high proportion of newly created accounts, a possible indication that unsophisticated influence operations are creating new accounts in order to flood the conversation. Analysis of Twitter data from the Dewey Square Group, sourced via the Twitter API, found that there was no decrease in the number of recently created accounts posting on controversial topics, such as climate change, Black Lives Matter, or George Soros, between February 5 and March 7. 

Dewey Square Group also compiled tweets from several prominent right-wing users, including Scott Presler, Mike Cernovich, Donald Trump Jr., and Matt Schlapp, to see if there were any dramatic changes to their engagement numbers. On Twitter, engagement metrics for these prominent right-wing users remained unchanged from February 5 to March 7.

Using CrowdTangle, Media Matters compiled a list of 1,773 Facebook pages that frequently posted about U.S. politics from January 1 to August 25, 2020.

For an explanation of how we compiled pages and identified them as right-leaning, left-leaning, or ideologically nonaligned, see the methodology here.

The resulting list consisted of 771 right-leaning pages, 497 ideologically nonaligned pages, and 505 left-leaning pages.

Analysis of trends in posts and interactions for news and politics pages in 2022:

Using CrowdTangle, Media Matters compiled all posts for the pages on this list, including Ben Shapiro and Breitbart, between January 1 and March 14, 2022. We reviewed data for these posts, including total interactions (reactions, comments, and shares).

Analysis of prominent right-wing narratives on Facebook:

We also compiled all posts for the pages on this list that were posted between January 1 and March 15, 2022, and were related to “culture war” issues.

We defined posts as related to “culture wars” if they had any of the following terms in the message or in the included link, article headline, or article description: “Great replacement,” “Great Reset,” “Judeo-Christian values,” “American values,” “Republican Values,” “Western Civilization,,” “Globalist,” “1776 Commission,” “1619 Project,,” “Parents Rights,” “Parent’s Rights,” “Wokeism,” “Wokeisms,” “Wokeist,” “Woke Outrage,” “Woke Media,” “Woke Agenda,” “Left-wing,” “Leftism,” “Radicalism,” “Pro-Capitalism,” “Socialism Sucks,” “Socialist Left,” “Anti-socialism,” “Anti-Communism,” “Communist Oppression,” “Cultural Marxism,” “War on Christmas,” “Back the Blue,” “#BacktheBlue,” “Blue lives matter,” “Rising Crime,” “Nuclear Family,” “equality of outcomes,” “equality of opportunity,” “parents matter,” “radical left,” “identity politics,” “woke mob,” “illegal immigrant,” “illegal alien,” “reverse racism,” “soros,” “liberal DA,” “progressive prosecutor,” “equity,” “real racist,” “colorblind,” “special interest,” “tyranny,” “bonds for the win,” “bondsforthewin,” “redpill,” “communist takeover,” “local action equals national impact,” “local action = national impact,” “woke ideology,” “wokeness,” “awake not woke,” “myocarditis,” “anti-mandate,” “COVID hysteria,” “coronavirus hysteria,” “Against mandatory vaccination,” “Against mandatory vaccines,” “Against vaccines,” “Anti-vaccination,” “Anti-vaccine,” “Anti-vax,” “Anti-vaxx,” “Asian virus,” “Asianvirus,” “Dr. #FearPorn,” “Emperor Fauci,” “fauci fraud,” “FauciFraud,” “Fire fauci,” “firefauci,” “Kung flu,” “Kung Flu,” “Kungflu,” “Medical choice,” “Medical freedom,” “Parent’s choice,” “Parental choice,” “plague,” “Stop mandatory vaccination,” “Stop mandatory vaccines,” “Vaccine choice,” “Vaccine damage,” “Vaccine deaths,” “vaccine experiment,” “Vaccine fraud,” “Vaccine injury,” “Vaccine rights,” “Vaccine truth,” “vaxxine,” “Virus Hoax,” “virushoax,” “Wuhan plague,” “Wuhan virus,” “Wuhanplague,” “Wuhanvirus,” “cultural socialism,” “precinct strategy,” “diversity hire,” or “truth social.”