Heres What Russias Propaganda Network Wants You to Read
Interesting.......
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Here’s What Russia’s Propaganda Network Wants You to Read
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/23/russia-propaganda-network-kremlin-bots-215520
How a new system for tracking Kremlin influence operations reveals what Moscow is thinking.
By J.M. BERGER
August 23, 2017
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Over the last year, Americans have been hearing a lot about Russian attempts to sway public opinion in the United States using manipulative tactics on social media. But in the abstract, it can be hard to understand exactly what that means.
To help illuminate the issue, the Alliance for Securing Democracy recently unveiled Hamilton 68, an interactive dashboard displaying the near-real-time output of Russian Influence Operations on Twitter—or RIOT, if you’re a fan of on-the-nose acronyms. The dashboard is the product of a research collaboration that includes myself, Clint Watts, Aaron Weisburd, Jonathon Morgan and the German Marshall Fund.
The network promotes a selective worldview of Western societies in decline, suffused with crime, chaos and conspiracy, and a Russia (and a Russian president) filled with strength and integrity. It produces some original content and amplifies content produced by other people, scouring the Internet for messages that tear down confidence in democracies, while absolving Russia and its allies from any hint of wrongdoing.
That said, RIOT is a complex affair. Influence operations are subtle by design, and those behind them don’t usually reveal themselves. The dashboard shows a mix of Twitter account types, including openly Russian-backed media such as Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik, as well as 600 Twitter accounts linked to a less obvious influence network, which exists to amplify opinions and information that favor the Kremlin’s preferred narratives.
The output of this network is not comprehensive by any means, but it is representative of the content shared by thousands more social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and virtually every other major social media platform. A detailed description of how this network was identified can be found here.
The network monitored by the dashboard amplifies three types of content: Content openly created by Russia; content of unclear origin, which the Russians may or may not have had a hand in creating or shaping, directly or indirectly by driving traffic to certain themes; and content that was created by third parties not formally connected to Russia, but which reflects the messaging priorities of the influence network.
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