by Jillian Rockford
Russia’s Internet Research Agency, also known as IRA, is currently using computational propaganda in order to misguide and control United States voters. Computational propaganda is the use of social networking algorithms along with human curation. The IRA strategically planned out a psychological war against the citizens of the United States by attempting to drive a divide between the American people. Social media campaigns held by the IRA had reached millions of users between the years of 2013-2018 as stated by research conducted by the University of Oxford. These Russian operated accounts and campaigns lead to over 30 million American people commenting on, liking, and sharing posts that had false and misleading information. This is however only a small part of what the IRA is responsible for. The IRA is a Russian company involved in online political warfare on the order of Russian intelligence and Russian president Vladimir Putin. The company has recruited countless fake accounts on the most popular social networking sites. The IRA went beyond fake accounts on social networking sites; going to the extremes of creating imitation news sites and video hosting services. The IRA used online resources to assist in the Kremlin’s influence in domestic and foreign policy together with the Middle East and Ukraine. Psychological Russian warfare did not stay virtual for long.
Multiple rallies and protests that took place in over ten American cities were organized by the IRA. Most of these protests seemed to all be linked to IRA Facebook groups such as LGBTUnited, Blacktivist, United Muslims of America, Don’t Shoot, Heart of Texas, and many more. These Russian-made protests are meant to cause racial tension in the United States. Almost all of these groups use bots to communicate and gather information from other online users. The bots that were used on the fake accounts can be used for numerous tasks such as distributing incorrect information, spamming other users, and harassing other accounts. The IRA groups also use bots for political purposes. For instance, the bots used in IRA groups for political purposes are there to strengthen social media propaganda and to spread or develop hate campaigns. These bots are one of the cornerstones of the IRA. A large group of political bots can be used by one person to make it seem as though a significant number of real people are taking part in the group. When in reality, only one person is behind the crowd.
According to a report by CNN, the accounts were made to look like they were being run by various groups of people, including black activists, pro-Trump, anti-Trump, feminists, LGBTQ rights activists, and environmentalists. Combined, the IRA manufactured accounts had more than 250,000 followers. Half of their followers were based in the United States. The accounts posed as real people from all sides of the political spectrum. All of these accounts had one thing in common: they all expressed their hostility against former Vice President Joe Biden. A profuse number of posts against former Vice President Joe Biden who is also running for office were mostly coming from a fake Bernie Sanders supporter account. One of the most common IRA tactics is called ‘character building’. Character building is where the Russian accounts who pose as liberals will attack Trump and Russian conservative accounts to establish a sort of credibility before attacking Joe Biden, as detailed by a report from CNN. This IRA tactic was also used in the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton. The IRA used these accounts to target liberal voters by stating that Hillary Clinton was not liberal enough to deserve votes from liberals and African Americans.
The biggest IRA linked group, Blacktivist, posted content only to spike outrage. One Blacktivist post read, “Black people should wake up as soon as possible.” Russia’s Internet Research Agency constructed various websites camouflaged as being concerned about the treatment of African Americans in the United States. The websites portrayed names such as blackmatterus.com, blacktivist.info, blacktolive.org, and blacksoul.us. Russian influenced propaganda also spread to the massive American online video-sharing platform: YouTube. False information spread quickly on the online platform in regards to the Black Lives Matter movement and police brutality. As stated in a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, more than half of people between the ages of 18-29 have shared content on social media relating to racial equality. According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center in November of 2019, one in five adults get their political news from social media websites. The social media website, Facebook, is the most popular choice for everyday use. 74% of adults say that they use Facebook on a daily basis, with the remaining 26% choose to use Facebook weekly or less often than that. Twitter is more popular among younger, college-aged people. With Facebook and Twitter being the most popular social media networking sites favored among the American public, this is where more IRA linked accounts and groups were found. Social media is the predominant media in which young people form their political identity, which is a worrisome fact considering the amount of political propaganda found on these social networking sites. In the beginning of 2019, many accounts located in Russia were a part of multiple fake circles designed to look like political groups in swing states as stated by Facebook. 50 of these accounts were found on Instagram and only one account was found on Facebook.
With the 2020 presidential election coming up, right now, the purpose of these IRA accounts is to steal voters away from former Vice President Joe Biden. Now more than ever, social media is being used as an instrument for public opinion manipulation, primarily by Russian intelligence, to disjoin the citizens of the United States of America.
