Thread by @Real_QL

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The scope of the Russian Disinformation campaign is bigger than you think (THREAD).

It is insanely CLEVER and diabolical.

(1)

In 2016 the Russia influenced the election in 3 ways:
1) Attempted to hack the online voting systems
2) Cyber-attack on DNC
3) Systematic social media disinformation campaign targeted at US citizens to exert political influence and exacerbate social divisions in US culture.

(2)

For number 1 they may have succeeded and in 2/3 they certainly succeeded. For the purpose of this thread i will be detailing with the 3rd point.

Systematic social media disinformation campaign

(3)

There were a number of groups focused on disinformation but for the sake of this thread i will be talking about the Internet Research Agency (IRA). A Russian company who worked on behalf of Russian business and political interests.

(4)

Initially the IRA focused on Ukrainian & Russian citizens. A common theme you will see is Russia trialling things on Ukraine before adapting them to the USA.
- Foreign interference
- Wars
- Elections
- Disinfo
- Etc

See @olgaNYC1211's work on for more details on this

(5)

The IRA had more than 1 000 employees working in a single building ("Troll farm) influencing every facet of American social media including: Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, blogs, YouTube, Instagram etc.

Yes that IMG below says 10.4 MILLION TWEET.

(5)

In which they focused on themes (see pic below)
- Do you see a common reoccurring theme here with the 2020 election?

(6)

The theme selected by the IRA was deployed to create and reinforce tribalism within each targeted community. E.g for Trump and Christians. They would utilise memes associating Trump and MAGA w/ Christianity & Hilary w/ the devil.

See any allusions to Qanon's rhetoric here?

(7)

It went further than this - the IRA would co-opt/infiltrate movements and create websites to fit their agenda. Here is a list of website they had where they could put their spin/bias and propaganda on to influence opinion.

(8)

It wasn't limited to website domains but also w/ YouTube channels focused on being:
- Anti-Hilary
- Voter suppression
- Advocating black voters stay home or vote for a 3rd party
- Infiltrating/co-opting police brutality narratives

(See any connections w/ 2020 election?)

(9)

On twitter they had 3841 persona accounts. Their activity took four forms:
- Repurposed accounts
- Newsbots accounts:
- Right-leaning accounts
- Left leaning accounts

(10)

On Facebook they leveraged: Ads, pages, Events, messenger and stickers.
- There was 76.5 million engagements across 3.3 million page followers
- This included 30.4 million shares, 37.6 million likes, 3.3 million comments and 5.2 million reactions.

(11)

The themes utilized in 2016 differ in some ways to what ever the perceived threat of the time is: e.g it was heavily anti-Muslim back in 2016.

HOWEVER...

(12)

BUT the main themes still remain now for 2020
- Creating civil division
- Voter suppression
- Racism
- Religion
- Guns
- Southern culture (confederate history)
- etc

(pic below from 2016 against Hilary - Compare to 2020)

(13)

Intermission post:

This is where it gets interesting.

I will delete this particular tweet when i recontinue the thread later

All info from report to Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI)

digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewconten…