The Border Force #Borderfarce: how Twitter helped to unravel Operation Fortitude

September 2 2015

By @G_Parsons33

Published in Crisis

This weekend should have been the start of “Operation Fortitude”, in Melbourne, Australia. The controversial policing operation would have allowed Australian Border Force officers, in collaboration with other agencies, to carry out random visa checks in Melbourne’s CBD.

The public uproar was immediate and overwhelming, with many calling the operation “Orwellian”, “racist” and “intrusive”. Within a matter of hours, the negative backlash had grown to such an extent that the whole thing was cancelled.

Using the Visibrain Twitter Listening platform, we analyzed the 115,223 tweets posted on August 28th to find out how Twitter contributed to putting a stop to Operation Fortitude.

Twitter goes into uproar as news of the operation spreads

If we zoom in on the Twitter stream timeline over the first 24 hours of the crisis, we can see that there were 115,223 tweets by 21,096 users, generating a total of 290,814,309 impressions.

An overview of the Twitter stream during the #borderfarce Operation Fortitude crisis

If we sort tweets by date and time of post, we can find out how the scandal broke on Twitter.

The very first tweet about Operation Fortitude was posted by Political Alert @political_alert at 09.55 am. The post appeared nine minutes before the official tweet announcing the operation, which as we can see on the list of tweets below, gave time for speculation to take hold and spread.

The first tweet about the #borderfarce crisis

The Australian Border Force Twitter account then posted this tweet at 10.02 am:

@VictoriaPolice announced Operation Fortitude on Twitter at 10.04 am. The tweet links to a press release that officials later admitted was unclear and badly worded. The document has since been removed from the site.

Tweets posted by Victoria Police about the crisis

It took no time at all for the news to spread: within minutes the Twitter stream exploded, going over two hundred tweets per minute.

A minute by minute view of the Twitter stream after the announcement of Operation Fortitude

By 2 pm there had been 28,476 tweets.

The #BorderFarce hashtag supports the protest

As usual in the case of Twitter crises, it didn’t take long for someone to come up with a dedicated hashtag. The #BorderFarce hashtag appeared for the first time just 18 minutes after the announcement of Operation Fortitude. It was used 19,111 times over the course of the day.

A timeline for the use of the #borderfarce hashtag

Filtering tweets containing the hashtag by time of publication reveals that the first tweet using the hashtag was sent by @andrewwhiteau:

The first tweet using the #borderfarce hashtag

If we look at accounts that got the most mentions in tweets containing #BorderFarce, we can see that important political figures such as @TonyAbbottMHR and @PeterDutton_MP were among the most frequently mentioned.

The most frequent mentions in tweets containg the #borderfarce hashtag

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott was mentioned 574 times in tweets using the #borderfarce hashtag, and received some pretty harsh criticism such as the post below.

@TonyAbbottMHR didn’t respond or comment.

Protesters take to Twitter to stop Operation Fortitude

As public outrage grew, users took to Twitter to organize a protest at Flinders Street Station, where a Press Conference about Operation Fortitude had been scheduled for 2 pm.

If we take a closer look at tweets posted in the hours before the protest, using “Flinders” as a keyword, Visibrain data reveals that there were 1,394 tweets between 10 am and 2 pm, calling for people to participate:

Tweets containg the Flinders keyword encouraging people to come to the protest

The top tweet, retweeted 272 times over the hours before the rally was sent by Guardian Australia columnist @vanbadham:

Filtering on this tweet reveals that it was retweeted by several influential journalists:

People who retweeted Van Badham's tweet calling people to come to the Flinders Street protest

Hundreds of people showed up to the protest, blocking the streets and the entrance to Flinders Street Station itself. Victoria Police were forced to cancel the press conference:

Just a few hours later, it was all over. Faced with such overwhelming opposition, Operation Fortitude was cancelled. At 2.40 pm, @VictoriaPolice sent this tweet:

A response that was too little, too late

The Australian Border Force and Victoria Police seemed to be completely unprepared for the social media mobbing sparked by Operation Fortitude, and their uncoordinated, unclear response only fanned the flames.

In spite of having been the account to announce Operation Fortitude, @VictoriaPolice did not respond to the crisis at all. Instead, @AusBorderForce took over, tweeting 5 times during the afternoon.

Tweets about the crisis posted by the Australian Border Force Twitter account

The posts have a defensive tone and were posted hours after the start of the crisis: far too late to clarify the situation and stop the organization of the protest at Flinders Street Station. As a result, they were largely ignored and gained very few engagements. A post linking to a more details about Operation Fortitude was posted at 1.52 pm, just 8 minutes before the press conference was due to start.

This lack of consistency between the Twitter accounts involved in the scandal and the time they took to respond meant that by the time any defensive action was taken by The Australian Border Force, it was already too late.

The #BorderFarce scandal is a brilliant example of the power of social media. In this case, the real-time nature of Twitter helped to spread news about Operation Fortitude very quickly and allow the organization of a peaceful, effective protest in record time.

Similarly, this case shows yet again how vital it is to be able to respond quickly and effectively to a crisis. The #BorderFarce debate is still ongoing: there have been 99,139 tweets about the crisis since August 29th.

Subscribe to the newsletter

Stay up to date and subscribe to our newsletter and receive media monitoring best practices, social data trends & exclusive case studies:

This field is not valid
Subscribe

Thank you! We will contact you shortly.

Published in Crisis