The IRA, social media and political polarization in the United States, 2012-2018
Context
Item belongs to a collection
Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) Collection
NGO publications from international, national, state, and local groups., NGO publications from international, national, state, and local groups.
- Digital collection
- 22 digital items
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Description
Creators/Contributors
- Author/Creator
- Howard, Philip N., author.
- Contributor
- Ganesh, Bharath, author.
- Liotsiou, Dimitra, author.
- Kelly, John, author.
- François, Camille, author.
- University of Oxford, publisher.
Contents/Summary
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 42-43).
- Contents
-
- Executive summary.
- Introduction: Rising IRA involvement in US politics.
- Data & Methodology.
- Overview of IRA activity across platforms.
- RA acticity and key political events in the US.
- The IRA's advertising campaign against US voters.
- How the IRA targeted US audiences on Twitter.
- Engaging US voters with organic posts on Facebook and Instagram.
- Conclusion: IRA activity a political polarization in the US.
- References.
- Series acknowlegements.
- Author biographies.
- Summary
- Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA) launched an extended attack on the United States by using computational propaganda to misinform and polarize US voters. This report provides the first major analysis of this attack based on data provided by social media firms to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). This analysis answers several key questions about the activities of the known IRA accounts. In this analysis, we investigate how the IRA exploited the tools and platform of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube to impact US users. We identify which aspects of the IRA's campaign strategy got the most traction on social media and the means of microtargeting US voters with particular messages.
- Supplemental links
-
comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk
www.intelligence.senate.gov
democrats-intelligence.house.gov
Subjects
- Subject
- Information warfare > Russia (Federation)
- Disinformation > Russia (Federation)
- Elections > United States.
- Social media > Political aspects.
- Online social networks > Political aspects.
- Internet in political campaigns > United States.
- Communication in politics > United States.
- Facebook (Electronic resource) > Political aspects > United States > Evaluation.
- Twitter > Political aspects > United States > Evaluation.
- Instagram (Electronic resource) > Political aspects > United States > Evaluation.
- YouTube (Electronic resource) > Political aspects > United States > Evaluation.
- Internet Research Agency, LLC.
- Polarization (Social sciences)
Bibliographic information
- Publication date
- 2018
- Copyright date
- 2018
- Note
- At head of title: Computational Propaganda Research Project.
