Using the SP!CE Framework to Code Influence Campaign Activity on Social Media: Case Study on the 2022 Brazilian Presidential Election

We describe a case study in the use of the Structured Process for Information Campaign Enhancement (SP!CE, version 2.1) to evaluate influence campaigns present in the 2nd round of the Brazilian presidential election in 2022 October. SP!CE is a US-military focused framework for describing both friendly and adversary actions in influence campaigns, and is inter-operable with the Disinformation Analysis and Risk Management (DISARM) framework. The purpose of the case study is to demonstrate how SP!CE can be used to describe influence campaign behaviors. We selected the Brazilian election as the target of the case study as it is known that there were significant amounts of mis- and disinformation present on social media during the campaigns. Our goal was to demonstrate how SP!CE could be applied in such a context, showing how social media content could be aligned with information campaign behaviors and how such an alignment can be used to analyze which mis- and disinformation narratives were in play. Additionally, we aim to provide insights on best practices regarding how to apply the framework in further research. We release the coding and screenshots of the relevant social media posts to support future research.
Comment: 23 pages, 34 figures, 1 table