Understanding the language of political disinformation:
IRA
The Internet Research Agency, a “troll factory” based in St. Petersburg, Russia, that churned out huge amounts of disinformation and propaganda on social media leading up to and following the 2016 U.S. election. For example, IRA’s 470 Facebook accounts made more than 80,000 posts, reaching at least 29 million Americans and perhaps as many as 126 million people overall.
GRU
Russian Federation’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, aka the Russian military intelligence operation.
Bots
Using automated algorithms to post information online, both to influence opinion and inflate statistics on support. As one study put it, “The idea behind political botnets is one of numbers: if one account makes a splash with a message then 1,000 bot-driven accounts make a flood.”
From Sept. 1 to Nov. 15, 2016, more than 36,000 Russian bots generated about 1.4 million automated tweets about the president campaign, generating about 288 million impressions.
The campaigns of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump used them, too. The latter campaign’s bots sent out 400,000 messages and nearly 2 million tweets about Trump, plus almost 15,000 retweets of Trump’s social media director, in a single month just before the 2016 election.
Trolls
Humans who post information online with a disguised identity.
Cyborgs
Provide a mixture of human and automated content.
RT (formerly Russia Today), Sputnik
Russian news operations, strongly believed to be controlled by the government.
Deep Fakes
Deceptive video, audio and still pictures generated by artificial intelligence. One example showed former President Barack Obama delivering a message — except that it was actually a comedian talking.
Cheap Fakes
Essentially the same as deep fakes except they are made using much less sophisticated software, such as Photoshop, or none at all.
Fake news
No, not simply news with which you disagree. In 2016, Russian operatives set up fake news sites to disseminate their propaganda. In the final three months of the presidential campaign, the top 20 false election news stories on Facebook (17 of which were pro-Donald Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton) generated more combined engagement than the top 20 stories from major U.S. news organizations. It wasn’t just Russia; BuzzFeed discovered 100 U.S. politics websites actually were being run out of Macedonia.
Sockpuppets
Fake online personas, such as the numerous IRA-created Twitter accounts — one of which even got a re-tweet by President Donald Trump.
Imposter content
Impersonating genuine entities, whether trusted logos, brands or names, as a shortcut to gain credibility for dubious content.
Keyword squatting
Associating a social media key word with a worldview to fill data voids with false content. It’s also been used on platforms such as Instagram during major events such as the 2018 California wildfires to advertise U.S. products.
Narrative laundering
GRU technique to place the Kremlin’s preferred stories — real, fake, or altered — into mainstream American media. It’s not new; in the 1980s, Russian intelligence operatives pushed a false narrative that HIV came from a secret U.S. bioweapon.
Catfishing
Technique used through IRA social media to set up political rallies in the U.S. A fictional event such as a rally in Pittsburgh would be scheduled via Facebook or Twitter. Then came the fishing part: Private messages would be sent to numerous legitimate U.S. social media users asking if they could come.
Once the “catfish” took the lure, the Russians would turn it over to them to make the gathering a reality, which the IRA would then heavily promote. Dozens of these Russian-inspired rallies took place during the 2016 campaign.
Hacking
Electronic break-in of a computer system. In March 2016, the GRU hacked computers and email accounts of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and its chair, John Podesta. In April and May, the IRA hacked the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee. The stolen information was leaked initially via a pair of online sources: DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0. Several Russian operatives were indicted by the U.S. for this action but remain at large.
Sources: U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee reports, Mueller report, First Draft, Stanford Internet Observatory, New York University professor Joshua Tucker, Buzzfeed, Washington Post, Business Insider, Poynter Institute, Oxford University, Columbia Journalism Review, Data Society
Follow Columbus Dispatch reporter Darrel Rowland on Twitter: @darreldrowland
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