Russian Twitter disinformation campaigns reach across the American political spectrum

Abstract

Evidence from an analysis of Twitter data reveals that Russian social media trolls exploited racial and political identities to infiltrate distinct groups of authentic users, playing on their group identities. The groups affected spanned the ideological spectrum, suggesting the importance of coordinated counter-responses from diverse coalitions of users.

Keywords

• disinformation
• ira
• politics
• russia
• social media
• twitter