The Russian accounts urged people who had backed Bernie Sanders against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination to stay home or to vote for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, in the general election. The New Knowledge report also describes what it calls “malicious misdirection” and “tweets designed to create confusion about voting rules.”
All of the emphasis on Facebook has obscured the huge role of Instagram, as well as the Russian activity on many smaller platforms.
Most of the early media coverage of the Russian campaign focused on Facebook. The New Knowledge report argues that the Internet Research Agency’s presence on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, has been underestimated and may have been as effective or even more effective than its Facebook effort. The report says there were 187 million engagements on Instagram — users “liking” or sharing the content created in Russia — compared with 76.5 million engagements on Facebook.
“Our assessment is that Instagram is likely to be a key battleground on an ongoing basis,” the report concludes.
Both reports note that there was hardly a social platform, however obscure, that the Internet Research Agency did not invade: Reddit, Google+, Vine, Gab, Meetup, Pinterest, Tumblr and more. The Russian trolls even created a podcast on SoundCloud.
Why are we still talking about this more than two years after the election?
Russia had used similar online influence tactics inside Russian borders and in neighboring countries, including Estonia, Georgia and Ukraine. But the campaign against the United States in 2016 was historic on several counts: It was the first major foreign influence campaign aimed at affecting a presidential election; it was the biggest influence operation ever to be aimed at Americans from another country; and it was the biggest attack ever — using virtual, not physical weapons — on the United States by its old Cold War adversary, albeit slimmed down from the Soviet Union to Russia alone. It will be studied for years.
It is impossible to measure what effect the Russian campaign — along with the hacking and leaking of Democratic emails — had on the outcome of the very close 2016 election. But some political scientists believe it may have won the presidency for Donald J. Trump — a remarkable conclusion, even if it cannot be proved or disproved.
Inevitably, some American political operatives are learning from Russia’s example, testing the tools of chicanery in their online operations. So the Internet Research Agency may have taught a new generation of tricksters how to swing an election in the cyberage.
from Just News Update https://ift.tt/2rGLSQt
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