Russians have infiltrated our media. Their objective? Spreading misinformation and causing chaos among the American people and government. Evidence of propaganda and disinformation has popped up over the last decade, with even the elections not being safe from Russia.
This graph shows the amount of advertisements
and propaganda from Russia over the years.
Through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more, Russia implements advertisements and propaganda posts to change people’s minds on politics. Russians spread disinformation that intends to sway the public into being against their government. An example would be the news site Zero Hedge, a far-right blog website, exposed by PropOrNot to be spreading Russian misinformation. Multiple websites had shown a positive correlation towards Russia’s media, Sputnik. Some sites would heavily criticize America and its allies, with the hopes of sowing discord within the country.
Stock image of phone screen.
Although you may think these troll posts are easy to spot, many people who do not use the Internet often fall victim to their tactics. The Russians change their posts to compare with current events, so these posts do not look irrelevant. Russia made memes to target younger audiences, including allusions to pop culture. Right-winged users would receive targeted advertising and posts about voter fraud, while African-Americans would receive posts that neglected to mention the elections. One of Russia’s troll farms, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), attempted to “blur the lines between reality and fiction”(APnews).
Don't be deceived!
What can we do to stay informed? At the moment, the only things we can do are to stay aware and research the topics that we come across if we find them suspicious. A common issue is that the Russian advertisements cater to what we want to see, so our personal biases will influence what we see as propaganda and what is not. Facebook launched a fact-checking initiative in 2016, while Twitter removed a large number of tweets on uncredible information.