In the intricate landscape of social media genuine content dissemination may be altered by a number of threats. Coordinated Behavior (CB), defined as orchestrated efforts by entities to deceive or mislead users about their identity and intentions, emerges as a tactic to exploit or manipulate online discourse. This study delves into the relationship between CB and toxic conversation on Twitter. Using a dataset of 11 million tweets from 1 million users preceding the 2019 UK General Elections, we show that users displaying CB typically disseminate less harmful content, irrespective of political affiliation. However, distinct toxicity patterns emerge among different CB cohorts. Compared to their non-CB counterparts, CB participants show marginally elevated toxicity levels only when considering their original posts. We further show the effects of CB-driven toxic content on non-CB users, gauging its impact based on political leanings. Our findings suggest a nuanced but statistically significant influence of CB on digital discourse.

翻译：在社交媒体复杂的内容生态中，真实信息的传播可能受到多种威胁的干扰。协调行为（CB）定义为实体为欺骗或误导用户对其身份及意图认知而进行的协同行动，已成为利用或操纵在线讨论的一种策略。本研究深入探讨了Twitter平台上协调行为与有害对话之间的关系。基于2019年英国大选前100万用户发布的1100万条推文数据集，我们发现无论政治立场如何，表现出协调行为的用户通常传播的有害内容较少。然而，不同协调行为群体间呈现出差异化的有害言论模式。与非协调行为用户相比，协调行为参与者仅在原始帖子中表现出略微更高的有害言论水平。我们进一步揭示了协调行为驱动的有害内容对非协调行为用户的影响，并根据政治倾向评估其作用效果。研究结果表明，协调行为对数字话语产生了细微但具有统计显著性的影响。