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A6 U.S. NEWS
Saturday 12 OctOber 2019
Study links Russian tweets to release of hacked emails

By TAMI ABDOLLAH Warren and Linvill call this
Associated Press a possible "new type of
WASHINGTON (AP) — Rus- agenda setting" where a
sia's interference in the big part of the information
2016 U.S. election has gen- operation conducted by
erally been seen as two the Russian government is
separate, unrelated tracks: changing the voices that
hacking Democratic emails are prominent in a political
and sending provocative conversation and, indirect-
tweets. But a new study ly, change the tenor of the
suggests the tactics were conversation.
likely intertwined. Sarah Mendelson, a pro-
On the eve of the release of fessor of public policy who
hacked Clinton campaign heads Carnegie Mellon
emails, Russian-linked trolls University's Heinz College in
retweeted messages from Washington, said the report
thousands of accounts on fills in details on the Krem-
both extremes of the Amer- lin's strategy.
ican ideological spectrum. "There's even more cohe-
Those retweets increased sion to the IRA plan than
the odds selected Twitter we thought," said Mendel-
users would be online and In this Nov. 1, 2017, file photo, Some of the Facebook and Instagram ads linked to a Russian ef- son, who has extensively
able to express outrage fort to disrupt the American political process and stir up tensions around divisive social issues, re- studied Russian disinforma-
when the next day on Oct. leased by members of the U.S. House Intelligence committee, are photographed in Washington. tion campaigns.
7, details such as the rev- Associated Press Mendelson noted that
elation that Clinton may Oct. 7, is not only Vladimir
have had early access to based this figure on a com- report detailed a com- Twitter accounts that the Putin's birthday, but the
a primary debate question parison with similar Twitter plex and highly effective Russians pushed to greater day U.S. officials publicly
were released. accounts that had not had campaign via the Russian prominence remain active stated that the Russian
Those retweets also brought a retweet from a Russian government-affiliated troll and contribute to the more government was behind
those lesser-known users a troll during that period. farm, known as the Internet polarized public debate to- the election hacking that
wider audience, encour- The research was support- Research Agency, or IRA. day. targeted Democrats, and
aging them to tweet more, ed by a Charles Koch Foun- But the retweeting strategy "Twitter can go and delete the day the Washington
and ultimately helping po- dation grant. has received less notice all the trolls, and what the Post published the Access
larize American public de- The authors say the foun- and may have a more last- trolls said, but this amplifi- Hollywood story and audio
bate. dation and its conservative ing impact. cation effect is still there," that included Trump mak-
In the study, Clemson Uni- leader did not influence The retweeting marked a Warren said. "It's like an in- ing lewd comments about
versity professors Darren L. the findings, which are in deliberate change in tac- fection. You can remove women.
Linvill and Patrick L. War- line with other, bipartisan tics. It remained in full force whoever was patient one While some have thought
ren say messages were research on Russian med- during the last month of in the infection, that's fine, the WikiLeaks release of Po-
retweeted from some 4,000 dling in elections. the election, with the IRA, but if the infection's already desta's hacked emails was
accounts on Oct. 6, 2016, In a statement, Twitter said, retweeting from an esti- started, it's too late." timed to detract from the
the day before Wikileaks' it is "committed to fostering mated 25,000 accounts The report marks the culmi- Access Hollywood story,
release of hacked emails free and open democratic and, in turn, making those nation of two years of study the professors say the clear
belonging to Hillary Clin- debate around the globe. users more active: They by the professors, whose Russian strategy of retweets
ton's campaign chair, John We've made significant sent some 4 million tweets prior work of Russian troll started the day prior indi-
Podesta. progress since the 2016 U.S. they otherwise would not activity has been picked cates that it's more likely
Through the retweets, Rus- election to address, miti- have sent, according to up by national security the timing of events was a
sian trolls amplified messag- gate, and prevent future the statistical analysis — agencies and the Senate happy coincidence.
es on the fringes of Ameri- attempts to undermine the and gained 3 million addi- Intelligence Committee The report found that the
can politics. Twitter users, integrity of online conver- tional followers. The professors zeroed in "left trolls" tended to target
especially on the far left, sation regarding elections The 4 million retweets in one on Oct. 6 because that's ideologically similar ac-
responded negatively to and the democratic pro- month greatly surpasses the day both left and right counts that were also often
revelations about Clinton, cess." the total 2.8 million unique ideologically aligned trolls part of the Black Lives Mat-
fulfilling Russia's attempt to While the existence of a tweets sent by Russian trolls went from merely building ter movement and used
boost Donald Trump's can- spike in Twitter activity on during the three-year cam- their identities on the social "black" in their descrip-
didacy and add to the di- Oct. 6, 2016, has been paign ending in 2017. media platform to sudden- tion. "Right trolls" tended to
visiveness in American poli- known and the authors pri- While Twitter ultimately ly using those personas to retweet and reply to ac-
tics. or work was cited in Tues- suspended the fake ac- build up selected existing counts that had account
Ultimately, those retweet- day's release of a Senate counts, roughly 90% of the users, especially retweeting descriptors like "MAGA"
ed users gained a total Intelligence Committee re- more ideologically extreme users on the far left. and "Conservative.q
of 500,000 new followers port on Russia's use of social
over the next four days, media during the election,
the study found. The in- exactly what those trolls
crease in followers appar- were up to has not been
ently prompted the Twitter previously detailed.
users to tweet more. The U.S. authorities have of-
report found that overall, ten pointed to Russia's use
they had sent 600,000 more of fake and ideologically
tweets over those four days extreme Twitter accounts
than they would have oth- — or trolls — to spread dis-
erwise. The researchers information. The Senate