Study blows lid on xenophobic Twitter network run by 'uLerato Pillay'

JOHANNESBURG - Over a decade after the first wave of widespread xenophobic attacks happened in South Africa, the country is still fraught with xenophobic sentiment and tension teetering on the verge of exploding at any given moment. Sadly, a small network of faceless individuals have used this to capitalise on Twitter reactions, a new study has revealed.

A key agitator is a Twitter account by the name of uLerato_Pillay, with several variations of the name. · Several of the 80 accounts were dormant for long periods and were suddenly activated on 27 April 2020. Many of the accounts serve no other purpose but to “signal boost” negative sentiment about foreign Africans. There is no meaningful personal content from any of the accounts.

· The network regularly tweets at Herman Mashaba and Julius Malema, who are not an integral part of the work. It appears that they want to capitalise on their extensive online following.

uLerato__pillay Leya NYELA white media!! PutSouthAfricansFirst 🇿🇦

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SCORPIO: @uLerato_pillay: How the xenophobic network around #PutSouthAfricaFirst was born and then metastasisedSouth Africans on Twitter are witnessing the rise of an influential anti-immigrant lobby and thousands, captured by a make-believe character, ‘Lerato Pillay’, have unwittingly become complicit in the explosion of a weaponised conversation. Now, an analysis of the social media conversation by the Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change has deemed uLerato to be part of a ‘dangerously orchestrated narrative’ that has affected at least 50,000 accounts so far.
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