A Russian disinformation campaign used every social media platform to spread messages to help Donald Trump in the 2016 election and after he took office, according to a new report prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The report is scheduled for release Monday and has been obtained by the Washington Post and New York Times.
“What is clear is that all of the messaging clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party — and specifically Donald Trump,” says the report, prepared by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika. “Trump is mentioned most in campaigns targeting conservatives and right-wing voters, where the messaging encouraged these groups to support his campaign. The main groups that could challenge Trump were then provided messaging that sought to confuse, distract and ultimately discourage members from voting.”
The interference effort was run by a Russian company called the Internet Research Agency, which has been hit with criminal charges. Their activity peaked at key moments like presidential debates and party conventions.
The Russians especially targeted black voters with their fake Facebook and Instagram accounts, according to the two papers’ accounts of the report. They had dozens of accounts targeting the black community, and ran Facebook ads targeted at users who had shown interest in black history, Malcolm X, and the Black Panther Party.
The Russians created accounts like @blackstagram on Instagram, which had more than 300,000 followers, and fake websites like blackmattersus.com, blacktivist.info, blacktolive.org and blacksoul.us, as well as YouTube channels focused on police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement.
According to the Senate report, the Internet Research Agency created 81 Facebook pages. Of those, 25 targeted the political right and gained 1.4 million voters, and 30 targeted African American audiences and gained 1.2 million followers.
Rightwing pages supported Trump, while left wing pages promoted Bernie Sanders or the Green Party candidate Jill Stein over the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.
More than 99% of all engagement came from 20 Facebook pages controlled by the agency, including “Being Patriotic,” “Heart of Texas,” “Blacktivist” and “Army of Jesus.”
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