#MacronLeaks changed political campaigning. Why Macron succeeded where Clinton failed

Using AI to counteract computational propaganda may be our only hope to preserve democracy as we know it

Last week’s massive hack of the Macron campaign and the sharing of alleged documents using #MacronLeaks on social media gave supporters the chills. Right-wing activists and autonomous bots swarmed Facebook and Twitter with leaked information that was mixed with falsified reports, to build a narrative that Macron was a fraud and hypocrite.

My colleagues at the Oxford Internet Institute and I have conducted an in-depth analysis of the impact of #MacronLeaks. Our research shows that 50 percent of the Twitter content was generated by just three percent of accounts with an average of 1,500 unique tweets per hour and 9,500 retweets of these tweets per hour. We estimate that over 22.8 million Twitter users were exposed to this information every hour on election day.

The manner in which the Macron camp responded to the leaks, and their overall digital strategy, offers clear lessons to others running for office. The same…