My co-authored report on Russia’s influence on Twitter during the 2020 US presidential election has been published by Free Russia Foundation. I and Maria Snegovaya conducted a representative online survey of Americans during the election campaign along with quantitative content analysis of their Twitter posts over a year. We aimed to reveal the relationship between people’s social, economic and political characteristics and their social media behavior, focusing on their engagement with narratives promoted by the Russian state.
The result of analysis showed that existence of a large number of active Twitter users who frequently post about divisive political issues in a similar way as the Russian state-controlled media (we call them “Russia-aligned users”); engagement with such posts were more frequent among our survey responders who are male, African-American, and in lower socioeconomic status.
Since most of the Russia-aligned users are not linked to the Russian states, they remained active, even after Twitter’s action to suspend many accounts in September and October. Our findings raise a question on how to prevent extremely partisan messages by politically active American citizens, that would have the same effect as Russia’s disinformation operations.
These findings were presented by Maria discussed by experts at the online event organized by the Atlantic Council. Video recording is also available on the page.
