1/n Did Russian trolls actually influence the attitudes and behaviors of U.S. social media users? Our Polarization Lab’s new article suggests the answer might be “no” pnas.org/content/early/…
2. Many people think Russian trolls exerted strong influence upon U.S. social media users because of the sheer scale and apparent sophistication of their techniques. There is also anecdotal evidence that IRA accounts succeeded in inspiring American activists to attend rallies.
3. Though many studies have analyzed the content and strategy of these campaigns, to our knowledge, no studies have examined whether they actually shaped the attitudes or behaviors of large groups of U.S. social media users.
4. Unfortunately, studying this question is very hard. Experiments that dispatch the type of messages produced by trolls are unethical… And data on trolls is hard to collect in real time.
5. Fortunately, Twitter shared a large dataset that described the accounts associated with the IRA campaign. We linked these data to a longitudinal survey of Republicans and Democrats who use Twitter that we fielded as part of another study in late 2017.
6. We studied whether interacting with trolls shaped six political attitudes and behaviors during this period (including both people’s opinions about specific issues as well as Republicans’ and Democrats’ perceptions of each other).
7. Though our analysis has important limitations (see below), we found no significant effects of interacting with trolls for any of our outcomes. We also found that the people who are mostly likely to interact with trolls are primarily those who are already highly polarized.
8. This finding is consistent with the theory of “minimal effects” in political communication research. The people who are most likely to engage with political messaging are the least likely to be influenced by it.
9. Indeed, a recent study indicates the net effect of most political campaigns is probably zero. If the most sophisticated American campaigns can’t really influence voters, why should we expect the Russians to be anymore successful?
10. It is also possible we found no effects simply because interactions with trolls were relatively rare and usually very brief/sporadic. Things might have been different if interaction was more widespread and extended over protracted time periods.
11. Our study has *many* limitations. We only studied one social media platform over one month, and we were not able to look at whether troll interaction shapes perceptions of trust, voting behavior, and other more indirect forms of influence.
12. We also were not able to determine whether trolls had more influence during earlier periods such as the 2016 election, or if their influence has evolved to become more impactful in the U.S. (or elsewhere) since the period of our study 2017.
13. Importantly, we also weren’t able to measure many types of exposure to trolls—we only capture troll interactions through likes, mentions, follows, retweets, and exposure via others who interact with them in such ways.
14. In short, ours is a very preliminary study of an extremely complex issue, and above all we need many more studies to understand how trolling by foreign adversaries impacts the American electorate.
15. For now though, we think our finding is an important reminder that the American public is not tabula rosa and may be more difficult to manipulate than many people think.
16. Or, a more depressing conclusion may be that we had already thoroughly polarized ourselves long before Russia intervened.
17. If you are interested in our lab’s ongoing research on social media and political polarization, consider checking out polarizationlab.com, or look out for a new book I am writing for Princeton University Press next year.
18. Also, please check out the amazing research of my wonderful collaborators (on Twitter) who made this paper much better than I ever could have by myself: @BrianMGuay, @emilykmaloney,@CombsAidan, @fmerhout, @dfreelon
