Russia INTERFERED in the 2016 elections. AND the 2020 elections.
Never a hoax.
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Intelligence officials have reportedly
found that Russia is interfering in the 2020 elections to try to support President Trump’s reelection, while also meddling in the Democratic primaries to
help Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign. The reports have not revealed details about what actions Russia is taking or their scope, but my analysis of social media activity exposes some examples.
I found that social media accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the Kremlin-linked company behind an influence campaign that targeted the 2016 elections, have indeed already begun their digital campaign to interfere in the 2020 presidential election. And they are getting even more brazen in tactics, as a sample of new posts shows.
In September 2019, just a few months ahead of the Democratic primaries, I noticed some posts on Instagram that appeared to use the strategies and tactics very similar to those of the IRA that I observed in my research on Russian interference in the 2016 elections on social media. A few weeks later,
Facebook announced that it had taken down about
75,000 posts across 50 IRA-linked accounts from Facebook (one account) and Instagram (50 accounts).
My team at
Project DATA (Digital Ad Tracking & Analysis) happened to capture some of these posts on Instagram before Facebook removed them. We identified 32 accounts that exhibited the attributes of the IRA, and 31 of them were later confirmed to be the IRA-linked
accounts by Graphika, a social media analysis firm commissioned by Facebook to examine the accounts.
Some strategies and tactics for election interference were
the same as before. Russia’s trolls pretended to be American people, including political groups and candidates. They tried to sow division by targeting both the left and right with posts to foment outrage, fear, and hostility. Much of their activity seemed designed to discourage certain people from voting. And they focused on swing states.
But the IRA’s approach is evolving. Its trolls have gotten better at impersonating candidates and parties, more closely mimicking logos of official campaigns. They have moved away from creating their own fake advocacy groups to mimicking and appropriating the names of actual American groups. And they’ve increased their use of seemingly nonpolitical content and commercial accounts, hiding their attempts to build networks of influence.
Continuing the same strategies and tactics
Overall, the IRA appears to still employ many of the same strategies and tactics as in 2016: posing as domestic actors, the IRA targeted both sides of the ideological spectrum with wedge issues. Especially noticeable were same-side candidate attacks (i.e., an “in-kind candidate attack” targeting the likely voters of the candidate), a type of voter suppression strategy designed to break the coalition of one side or the other.
The Kremlin-linked operation behind 2016 election meddling is using similar tactics for 2020, plus some new ones.
www.brennancenter.org