Divide and Conquer: Russian Propaganda on Social Media

This week NPR did a story about the spread of Russian propaganda on social media and since we have been discussing propaganda and how it is useful and what contributes to effective advertising I thought this would be an excellent article to look at. This article is a part of a more extensive series that NPR is doing called: Tech Titans, Bots, and the Information Complex.

Facebook, Google, and Twitter will be a part of hearing this week to look at their role in Russian Interference with the 2016 election. The author of the article, Laura Sydell does an interesting job in giving examples of Russia's use of social media accounts to influence people's perceptions of our society. The first case is of a woman named M'tep Blount. M'ept is involved with the Black Lives Matter, and Facebook suggested that she may be interested in joining the Blacktivist Facebook group, it looked like it was centered around concerns of police brutality and violence.

As it turns out, the Blacktivist page was not like Black Lives Matter, at all. It appears to have been linked to Russia, and Facebook has since taken it down. The group was carefully crafted to attract people like Blount whose behavior on Facebook showed the mistrusted police and were concerned about civil rights." (Sydell) 

But what is the purpose of such groups, what does Russia gain from creating groups such as this to deceive citizens? The answer says Sydell is: "It is just one of the many calculated ways in which social media platforms have been used lately to covertly sow divisions within society." (Sydell) The article uses an expert, Jeff Hancock, a psychologist that heads Stanford University's Social Media Lab to add validity. He supports Sydell's claim saying that this kind of propaganda "is designed to enhance divisions among people and increase 'the anger within each other. It's really truly just a simple divide-and-conquer approach"(Sydell)

The other example from the article that links to our class is the use of Twitter. The account @TEN_GOP which called it's self the unofficial account of the Tennessee Republican Party had over 100,000 followers, "but it was purportedly set up by Russians....For months it sent out a stream of fake news such as a tweet falsely stating that there was voter fraud in Florida." (Sydell)

It will be interesting to see how these hearings change how ads are created on social media sites and what degree of transparency is required for the origins paying for the ads and creating content. This kind of propaganda also raises some interesting questions about our society. We are so easy to trust what we see on social media?  How do we know what "groups" are real? What does this say about our culture and society?


Here is the link to the full article:
How Russian Propaganda Spreads On Social Media