Report finds online campaign of "widespread targeted harassment" against supporters of Amber Heard

It's been more than a month and a half since the civil defamation trial between celebrity actors Amber Heard and Johnny Depp was decided, but Ella Dawson's Twitter notifications haven't stopped.

"I'm still getting people tweeting at me, calling me weird heinous stuff. And it's been weeks and weeks. That's very strange," said Dawson, a digital strategist and writer.

Dawson was one of many Heard supporters on the receiving end of an organized campaign of "widespread targeted harassment," according to a report published Monday by the research firm Bot Sentinel. The firm analyzed more than 14,000 tweets that included at least one of four viral anti-Heard hashtags seeking to characterize Heard as a liar or an abuser, and found that nearly 1 in 4 accounts tied to the tweets, 24.4%, were created in the last seven months. Nearly 1 in 5 accounts to tweet the hashtags "were dedicated to spamming," according to the report.