Pseudoanonymous Accounts Discussing COVID-19 Policies in Finland

The next speakers in this AoIR 2022 session are Tuomas Heikkilä and Salla-Maaria Laaksonen, whose interest is in pseudoanonymous communicators during the COVID-19 crisis. These users use semi-stable pseudonyms, so they are neither identifiable nor fully anonymous, and the present study explored their role in political debate around the pandemic. This builds on the theory of connective action: organised communication without the presence of a central organisation coordinating activities. This can be more personal, more scalable, and more rapid.

Anonymity has long been studied online; it enables public participation while concealing real-name identities. But the platformisation of the Internet has limited online anonymity, as users are required or encouraged to provide identifiable information about themselves. In this context, anonymity is sometimes seen as a threat to democracy as it can be used to disguise problematic activities; yet anonymity also enables people to voice more critical social commentary without fear of repercussions or repression.

The present project therefore focusses on pseudoanonymity: this is enacted on Twitter for instance through the choice of usernames and handles, which can also be changed later on; these are varying lay connected, durable, and traceable, and are privately anonymous but politically identifiable. This both masks identities and enables the creation of new ones. The project operationalises these distinctions by coding the personal information provided by Twitter users, rating them on a scale from 0 to 4 for their provision of personal information. It applied this scale to a dataset of some 621 accounts that were especially active in discussion COVID-19 in Finland, and also examined the tweets posted by these accounts.

Pseudoanonymous accounts engaged intently in COVID-19 discussions, and form tightly-knit communities in their interactions; they belong to a number of distinct communities, however: a zero COVID community promoting the complete elimination of COVID-19; an alt-expertise sharing pseudo-scientific content that opposes government policies; and an alt-government community that focussed on the government’s perceived failures on COVID-19 as well as on immigration and other common far-right topics. These groups were also aligned with particular Finnish political party blocs.