Thread by @timkmak

Two exclusives this morning:

NPR, w/outside data firm, sifted through 3 million Russian troll farm tweets to find out how the Internet Research Agency talked about the NRA and guns from 2015-2018

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Russia's Twitter influence campaign was strongly pro-gun, pro-NRA, and echoed the NRA's views

The analysis shows that 77% of their content was pro-gun, pro-NRA; and 11% was anti

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On every issue from race to healthcare, women's rights to police brutality, gay marriage to global warming, accounts associated with the "Internet Research Agency" amplified controversy by playing up conflict.

Except when it came to guns and the NRA.

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Here's the breakdown of the data: 60% of the Internet Research Agency's accounts were pro-NRA, pro-gun accounts; and they produced 77% pro-NRA, pro-gun content:

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Pro-NRA and pro-gun messages had more than 32.4 million potential impressions; anti-gun and anti-NRA messages had fewer than 6.7 million potential impressions.

The pro-NRA messages had nearly five times the reach as the anti-NRA

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"I can't think of another issue where they don't play both sides in order to strike a wedge between them," said [Clemson Prof] Linvill, who with Warren have done extensive work analyzing the millions of IRA tweets on a variety of issues. "It's 100 percent an anomaly"

Here's how weird it was: even Russia's trolls that purportedly represented the left — including those which supported Black Lives Matter or were anti-police — also supported gun owners' rights.

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There was a lot of of what analysts call "semantic overlap" between the IRA and NRA posts ... both groups stressed how unsafe they said America is, including because of violent threats, and consistently faulted areas by name with strict gun laws.

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The IRA's agitation campaign was run by Russians out of an office in Saint Petersburg. How did they know how to pinpoint their political criticisms about the gun regulations in places such as Tehama County, California?

Fmr CIA @StevenLHall1 weighs in:

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By now there is a general public understanding about Alexander Torshin and Maria Butina.

You might wonder if the Russian trolls ever talked to Torshin on Twitter.

The answer is yes.

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At least ten tweets from eight different IRA accounts went to Torshin. In some cases, Torshin wrote back. In one message, an IRA account sent him holiday greetings.

In another, they quoted, in Russian, a poem from Russian poet Mikhail Lermantov:

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More than just messaging, NPR has also found word for word copying by the Russian Internet Research Agency from the National Rifle Association:

Here's a side-by-side about how they wrote about the DNC's Keith Ellison

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Check out this Russian troll farm post, with the NRA logo, which cribbed from an NRA Institute of Legislative Affairs link:

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The Internet Research Agency also posted an image celebrating NRA President Wayne LaPierre's visit to the White House.

In another case, the Russian social media account directed its followers to an NRA Institute for Legislative Action alert.

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The IRA accounts have mentioned the @NRA, @NRANEWS, or @NRAILA accounts a total of 199 times. Dana Loesch, an outspoken supporter of gun rights who would become a spokeswoman for the NRA in 2017, was tagged 77 times on her Twitter handle '@DLoesch.'

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Here's the kicker: The National Rifle Association, on at least 90 occasions, promoted Twitter content similar to that of the Internet Research Agency, in some cases after the IRA had gone first.

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On 62 occasions, the Internet Research Agency shared same content as the National Rifle Association after an original NRA post.

There were also 28 occasions where the National Rifle Association posted similar content as the IRA, after the IRA went first.

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In conclusion, thanks to NPR intern Naomi Shah for helping me sift through pages upon pages of tweets; and of course @Lena_Richards, who balked when I asked her to manually code 30,000 Russian troll tweets and suggested we do big data analysis instead