They've found that Russian influence only reached a small number of users and that mainstream media had a much larger influence.

Abstract:

There is widespread concern that foreign actors are using social media to interfere in elections worldwide. Yet data have been unavailable to investigate links between exposure to foreign influence campaigns and political behavior. Using longitudinal survey data from US respondents linked to their Twitter feeds, we quantify the relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and attitudes and voting behavior in the 2016 US election. We demonstrate, first, that exposure to Russian disinformation accounts was heavily concentrated: only 1% of users accounted for 70% of exposures. Second, exposure was concentrated among users who strongly identified as Republicans. Third, exposure to the Russian influence campaign was eclipsed by content from domestic news media and politicians. Finally, we find no evidence of a meaningful relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior. The results have implications for understanding the limits of election interference campaigns on social media.

  • Lovely_sombrero [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    My problem is that even this article still takes the claim "there was a well-funded Russian disinformation campaign" at face value.

    There was an NBC article on those supposed “Russian twitter accounts” in 2017. It came with a spreadsheet of raw data from those accounts and you could order it by “most likes” etc. And the most retweeted account by those “Russian pro-Trump trolls” was MSNBC host Joy Ann Reid… Not because those were pro-Trump or anti-Trump accounts, but because those were usual account farms, where they would try to get followers and then serve them their own ads. And because Joy Ann Reid was good at getting her show trending on Twitter with the #AMJoy hashtag, those account farms retweeted her a lot. And when #MAGA got their shit trending, those accounts retweeted those tweets.

    https://hexbear.net/post/244417/comment/3137238

    • macabrett
      ·
      2 years ago

      That's fair, but it is still a good piece of evidence to dispel the weird myth liberals have built up.

    • FourteenEyes [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Honestly it feels like if the intelligence communities of other big countries know what they're doing, they're doing CIA-style bot spam wherever and whenever just to stay competitive

      But to assert that they have a specific goal rather than general obfuscation and propaganda without any evidence is fucking stupid

    • Findom_DeLuise [she/her, they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      :LIB:s try to understand the difference between Russian state-sanctioned intelligence op and privately-owned social media bot farm challenge level: impossible