The graph is worthless because it is plotted on 10 second intervals, such spikes are likely caused by twitter's server ticks. Also the shown timespan is tiny and covers a point in day at which most people are asleep, those who do tweet are likely browsing twitter, reading responses, and then tweeting themselves, again 10 second intervals don't work in your favour.

Those contributors, are they bots or aren't they? Provide some evidence that these accounts are bots, a few screencaps of their tweets should prove it.

"Orchestrated efforts to discredit the media" Oh the media is discrediting itself quite effectively without the influence of outsiders, my opinion of 'the media' has dropped severely not because of some mean tweets, but because of the constant misrepresentation and lying they commit.

These users who are active in this anti-CNN hashtag were also active in other anti-CNN hashtags, thus the only clear explanation is that they are bots