Troll Factories: Manufacturing Specialized Disinformation on Twitter

Linvill, Darren L.; Warren, Patrick L.

doi:10.1080/10584609.2020.1718257

Cited by 130 publications

(136 citation statements)

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“…We show that the networked output of the IRA Twitter accounts was homophilic, both within and external to the network. Linvill and Warren (2020) show that the IRA accounts were specialized by theme. The IRA-operated accounts linked to external accounts that shared a theme with the account doing the linking.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…IRA accounts were thematic (Linvill & Warren, 2020), and the accounts that interacted most with outsiders fell into one of three themes: Right Troll, Left Troll, and Hashtag Gamers. The first panel of Figure 4 presents the most prominent words in account descriptions from trolls of these three types.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, the output of the IRA-affiliated accounts and the identities of the accounts they retweet and reply to come from the hashed version of Twitter's January 2019 update to their October 2018 release of the output they linked to the IRA (Roth, 2019). Second, we use Linvill & Warren's (2020) categorization of these accounts into thematic types. 5 From these data, we create metrics of internal and external activity over time, including: 1) raw counts of retweets and replies, as a function of the category of originating account and (for internal targets) the category of the targeted accounts; 2) the fraction of output devoted to the various sorts of networked output.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Linvill and Warren (2020) provide some evidence that October 6 th was selected to activate left-wing actors who were already suspicious of Clinton's candidacy in anticipation of the release of John Podesta's emails, but the exact timing is not particularly important to the overall strategy we document in this paper.…”

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confidence: 95%

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Engaging with Others: How the IRA Coordinated Information Operation Made Friends

Linvill

Warren

2020

HKS Misinfo Review

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We analyzed the Internet Research Agency's (IRA) 2015-2017 English-language information operation on Twitter to understand the special role that engagement with outsiders (i.e., non-IRA affiliated accounts) played in their campaign. By analyzing the timing and type of engagement of IRA accounts with non-IRA affiliated accounts, and the characteristics of the latter, we identified a three-phases life cycle of such engagement, which was central to how this IRA network operated. Engagement with external accounts was key to introducing new troll accounts, to increasing their prominence, and, finally, to amplifying the messages these external accounts produced.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 95%

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Engaging with Others: How the IRA Coordinated Information Operation Made Friends

Linvill

Warren

2020

HKS Misinfo Review

Self Cite

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“…Rather than necessarily drive a population toward a particular action, disinformation campaigns can create a confused, polarized, hostile information landscape (Pomerantsev & Weiss, 2014) that undermines deliberative democracy (McKay & Tenove, 2020). Linvill and Warren (2020), drawing from the partial IRA tweets dataset released by Twitter, identify five different account types being utilized by the agency between 2009 and 2018. Accounts are identified as Right Trolls, Left Trolls, News Feed, Hashtag Gamer, or Fearmonger, depending on the persona the account adopted and the content shared.…”

Section: Disinformation Campaignsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Russian Internet Research Agency Disinformation Activities on Tumblr: Identity, Privacy, and Ambivalence

Hoch

2020

Social Media + Society

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On 24 March 2018, Tumblr terminated 84 user accounts identified as being “linked to Internet Research Agency or IRA (a group closely tied to the Russian government) posing as members of the Tumblr community.” In response, Tumblr deleted the blogs and accounts of these 84 users but allowed reblogs of their posts to continue to circulate openly on the platform. Through a case study of posts originating with one IRA account, Lagonegirl, and qualitative interviews with 13 Tumblr users, this article considers the platform conventions and social norms that were utilized by the Lagonegirl account to facilitate its distribution of disinformation. Posing as a Black woman concerned with social justice but also sharing humorous posts that resonated with Millennials, Lagonegirl’s performance shows overlap with existing work on “Left Troll” IRA Twitter accounts while demonstrating platform specificity in the construction of posts.

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Trolling CNN and Fox News on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter

Fichman

Rathi

2023

Asso for Info Science & Tech

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Online trolling, disinformation, and deception are posing an existential threat to democracy. Informed by the online disinhibition theory and research on the ideological asymmetry between Democrats and Republicans, we examined how the extent and style of trolling varies across social media platforms, by analyzing comments on posts by two media channels (CNN and Fox News) on three social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter). We found differences in the style and extent of trolling across platforms and between media channels, with more trolling on articles posted by Fox News than by CNN, and a different trolling style on Twitter than Facebook or Instagram. Our study demonstrates a delicate balance between the socio‐technical factors that are enabling and hindering trolling. While some platforms and government agencies believe in removing anonymity to regulate online harm, this paper makes a significant contribution against that view.

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Troll Factories: Manufacturing Specialized Disinformation on Twitter

Cited by 130 publications

References 10 publications

Engaging with Others: How the IRA Coordinated Information Operation Made Friends

Engaging with Others: How the IRA Coordinated Information Operation Made Friends

Russian Internet Research Agency Disinformation Activities on Tumblr: Identity, Privacy, and Ambivalence

Trolling CNN and Fox News on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter

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