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.
Libs will double-down and call this a Russian op. Scouring the pasts of those involved, searching for any ties to anything Russian no matter how tenuous and stretched. Like, one of them maybe watched Gorky Park 15 years ago and enjoyed it and decided to read more about Russian urban planning and history.
Yeah, these fucking lunatics were calling the woman who accused :biden-the-thing: of SA a Russian agent
#MeToo unless it's our savior angel coming to swoop us away from Drumpf.
Not shocked at all. Rachel Maddow probably had more to do with Trump getting elected than the Russians.
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
That's fair, but it is still a good piece of evidence to dispel the weird myth liberals have built up.
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
:LIB:s try to understand the difference between Russian state-sanctioned intelligence op and privately-owned social media bot farm challenge level: impossible
Russian influence only reached a small number of users and that mainstream media had a much larger influence
This is the most effective way to walk libs off the Russiagate ledge. They will not buy that there was zero influence, and that probably isn't true anyway. What's likely true, and what guts the whole Russiagate narrative, is that Russian influence was a drop in the bucket. This also works well with the litany of articles you can find talking about the billions in free media coverage even lib outlets gave to Trump.
Most importantly, this gives libs an out where they can think they were somewhat correct (Russia did attempt to influence the election, it just amounted to very little). Most people don't react well to being told they're completely, 100% wrong.
Didn't the Mueller report itself basically find that there was like, 2000 ads TOTAL paid by "Russia" on FB?
I'd be curious to see a comparison of the "russian interference" with that by cambridge analytica (AKA UK interference).
Liberals love to use woke language to say that the CIA doesn't influence elections abroad. It's taking away the agency of those people. But when it's their issues? Russia. The Russians are dividing us and making us fall further to the far-right. Bernie and the squad are both Communist agitators btw that are probably on Putin's payroll too.
