Elections and Media

A review of the private Facebook messages, as well as interviews with the Trump campaign operatives who were targeted by Russians, reveal that Trump’s team was susceptible to Moscow’s interference campaign. It preyed on unsuspecting staff members who were more interested in capturing the enthusiasm of supporters of their unorthodox nominee and did not envision the seemingly far-fetched possibility that Russians might enlist them as unwitting players in a scheme to undermine American democracy.

Proposed Federal Election Commission rules aimed at preventing foreign influence on US elections through better disclosure of online political ad sponsors may not take effect before the 2018 midterms, Chairwoman Caroline Hunter said.  “The commission has been reluctant to change the rules of the game in the middle of the election season, so that would be something we would want to seriously consider,” she said. 

We investigated the differential diffusion of all of the verified true and false news stories distributed on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. The data comprise ~126,000 stories tweeted by ~3 million people more than 4.5 million times. We classified news as true or false using information from six independent fact-checking organizations that exhibited 95 to 98% agreement on the classifications.

Weeks after Donald Trump was elected president, Russia-backed online “trolls” flooded social media to try to block Mitt Romney from securing a top job in the incoming administration, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows. The operatives called the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, then a contender for secretary of state, a “two headed snake” and a “globalist puppet,” promoted a rally outside Trump Tower and spread a petition to block Romney’s appointment to the top diplomatic job, according to a review of now-deleted social-media posts.

[Commentary] In a new study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, we look at how often, and in what context, Twitter accounts from the Internet Research Agency—a St. Petersburg-based organization directed by individuals with close ties to Vladimir Putin, and subject to Mueller’s scrutiny—successfully made their way from social media into respected journalistic media. We searched the content of 33 major American news outlets for references to the 100 most-retweeted accounts among those Twitter identified as controlled by the IRA, from the beginning of 2015 through September 2017.

Leveraging social media, Russians have collected data by peddling niche business directories, convincing activists to sign petitions and bankrolling self-defense training classes in return for student information. It isn’t clear for what purpose the data were collected, but intelligence and cybersecurity experts say it could be used for identity theft or leveraged as part of a wider political-influence effort that didn’t end with the 2016 election.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway violated the Hatch Act on two occasions, the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) informed the Trump administration.  Appearing in her official capacity, Conway endorsed and advocated against political candidates, the watchdog said, referring its findings to President Donald Trump "for appropriate disciplinary action."

A Q&A with Phil Weiser, a professor of law and telecommunications at the University of Colorado, about the state of online political advertising. 

Among the list of banned advertising on Facebook you’ll find the usual suspects: guns, drugs, porn etc. Also, on that list? Bad grammar, and recently added, cryptocurrencies. When it comes to political campaign ads however, the rules are few and far between. Unlike television, radio and print ads, online campaign ads don’t face federal regulations.

The Kremlin’s political warfare against democratic countries has evolved from overt to covert influence activities. But while Russia has pioneered the toolkit of asymmetric measures for the 21st century, including cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns, these tools are already yesterday’s game. Technological advances in artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and machine learning, combined with the growing availability of big data, have set the stage for a new era of sophisticated, inexpensive, and highly impactful political warfare.