Just in case anyone wanted yet another reason to blame the Russians for Hillary Clinton’s crushing defeat in 2016, University of Wisconsin researchers have looked into the fake Twitter accounts operated by Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) in the run up to and aftermath of the most recent presidential election.
They accuse the Russians of trying to create greater division in the nation by posting extreme opinions on Twitter. They weren’t promoting fake news, but instead linked to real articles to support their out of the mainstream positions. Targeting “major journalistic outlets such as USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and NPR” and partisans sites such as “HuffPost, the Daily Caller and the Blaze, the Russians were trying to amplify the extremes to create the impression that there is no middle ground in this country. More
The executive summary says more than once the goal of the Russian trolls was to lessen Clinton’s chances and to boost Trump’s, which still makes no sense to me. So I’m still not sure I believe that part.
@grool: I gotta agree. Hillary was running the State Department like a Wal Mart for classified information. Imagine what the Russians could have found out if she was in the White House?
Has a familiar ring much the same as fake news and twisted stories used by our beloved news media and political organizations right here in our own homeland. How would we be able to determine which miss directions were Russian inspired or based?? Which lie would be more damaging to a voters choice Russian lies or ours?? Gee, now voters have to sort out real lies from fake lies.
Research from the Univ.of Wisconsin in Madison Wisconsin to perpetuate division and false narrative. An academic mecca of solipsistic progressive socialism.
Who would have thought Russians would be proponents of the Democrat agenda of trolling behavior to influence voters for Hillary and the National media’s orchestrated complicity for widespread fake news content presenting anti-Trump propaganda.
I wonder, who was leading the Democrats and the orchestrated Media propaganda attacks on the Trump Campaign and Administration?
The Russians? The Uni-Party Establishment?
Or the international super-rich, elite progressive socialists who support one world government?
Take your pick, they all have the same goal.
Money, Power and most importantly Control.
For this to be true, the Stalinists in Moscow, ostensibly for Trump, would have to be in complete opposition to the Stalinists in the U.S. media, in academia, in D.C., etc, who at against Trump.
No. Way.