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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Media Governance and the Public Sphere
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2025.1510144
This article is part of the Research TopicDigital Citizenship in the New Era of Social MediaView all articles
There was Coordinated Inauthentic User Behavior (CIUB) in the Covid-19 German X-Discourse, but did it really matter?
Provisionally accepted- Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
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This study examines the role of coordinated inauthentic user behavior (CIUB) in the German Covid-19 discourse, focusing on the #nocovid hashtag. We analyze CIUB in relation to three dimensions of social media: communication, networks, and platforms.While our findings confirm the presence of coordinated behavior within the discourse, our analysis shows that CIUB itself did not significantly influence the debate. Instead, platform policies appear to have played a crucial role in shaping engagement by selectively amplifying or suppressing specific viewpoints. Using Granger causality analysis, we demonstrate that coordinated activity does not drive non-coordinated discourse. Conversely, an analysis of platform effects reveals that X's algorithm systematically limited the visibility of anti-nocovid viewpoints. These findings highlight the need to reassess concerns about the influence of CIUB, shifting focus toward the role of platform policies in structuring online debates.The platform itself, which preferred one viewpoint over another, was what drove #nocovid's virality rather than coordinated behavior.
Keywords: coordinated inauthentic behavior, Social media network (SMN), social media communication, Social media platform, disinformation
Received: 12 Oct 2024; Accepted: 21 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sarhan and Hegelich. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Habiba Sarhan, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
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