Mainstreammedia used tomanipulate Americans
Russia’s disinformation campaign during the 2016 presidential election relied heavily on stories produced by major American news sources to shape the online political debate, accoding to a new analysis published Thursday.
The analysis by Columbia University social media researcher Jonathan Albright ofmore than 36,000 tweets sent by Russian accounts showed that obscure or foreign news sources played a comparatively minor role, suggesting that the discussion of “fake news” during the campaign has been somewhat miscast.
Albright’s research, which he said is themost extensive to date on the news links that Russians used to manipulate the American political conversation on Twitter, bolsters observations by other analysts. Clinton Watts, a former FBI agent and disinformation expert from the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, said that by linking to popular news sources, the Russians bolstered the credibility of their Twitter accounts, making it easier to manipulate audiences.
“The Kremlin, they don’t need to create a false narrative. It’s already there,” he said. “You’re just taking a narrative and elevating it.”
Some well- chronicled hoaxes reached large audiences. But Russian- controlled Twitter accounts, Albright said, were far more likely to share stories produced bywidely read sources of American news and political commentary. The stories themselves were generally factually accurate, but the Russian accounts carefully curated the overall flow to highlight themes and developments that bolstered Re- publicanDonald Trump and undermined his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
Among the tweets Albright studied, the most common links were to Breitbart News, followed by The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle. The list of the top 25 linked sites had a conservative bent, with the Daily Caller, Fox News and the Gateway Pundit appearing. Also popular, but not in the top 25, were direct links to a page collecting online donations for Trump’s campaign.
The Russian governmentfunded news site RT ranks 19th among widely linked sites; no other foreign-based site ranks among the top 25 on that list.
The timing of tweets from accounts that were part of the Russian campaign also suggests a shrewd sense of when to strike, the newanalysis shows. The volume of tweets shows a major spike of activity, for example, in the days after Clinton stumbled in New York on Sept. 11 while battling pneumonia, a moment that sharpened concerns about her health.
Another finding of the analysis showed Russian accounts devoted mainly to promoting local news in 30 major cities such as San Francisco, Boston andHouston.
“They’re really trying to drive the news conversation,” Albright said. “They’re trying to set the agenda.”
The tactic of linking to credible news stories also allows the occasional promotion of outright falsehoods from obscure sites, which followers of an accountmay accept more readily after weeks or months of linking to more familiar news sources, said several researchers. They also said pushing content on Twitter can affect its prominence on other platforms.