By Friday, Fraser told Daily Maverick, 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 Marc Smith, director of the Social Media Foundation, Fraser produced on Monday two graphs representing various clusters of Twitter users and which he posted on his Twitter account @Arfness.

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).

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, and other media began to publish the damning contents of the #GuptaLeaks trove.

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.

You can explore Fraser and Smith’s results here and here.

The graphs are interactive and list top hastags, top tweeters, top tweets as well as top domains and URLs.

Fraser and Smith’s Gupta bot graphic comes as South Africans celebrated a minor victory over UK based global spin doctors Bell Pottinger on the weekend when a barrage of complaints from South Africans forced the PR firm to lock it’s Twitter profile. DM

Photo: Fraser and Smith’s Gupta bot graphic.