Russian Influence Measured

[Tom Sawyer]

Yeah, its all right wing people posting links to yournewswire, RT, Ruptly, etc... because the disinformation is having no impact. Censor it? Maybe not. But it needs to have a light on it.

Ya, that's my point. People are talking about it like it's some horribly illegal attack on the United States. If it was the Russian government trolling on Facebook, that's not actually anything except the Russian government trolling on Facebook. Yes, it's good to shed light on it and all, but ... so what?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yeah, its all right wing people posting links to yournewswire, RT, Ruptly, etc... because the disinformation is having no impact. Censor it? Maybe not. But it needs to have a light on it.

Ya, that's my point. People are talking about it like it's some horribly illegal attack on the United States. If it was the Russian government trolling on Facebook, that's not actually anything except the Russian government trolling on Facebook. Yes, it's good to shed light on it and all, but ... so what?

Did you know that Justin Trudeau runs a panda trafficking program in the basement of a Pizzeria?

In Canada, you'd shrug it off and say, 'Sounds like Justin.'

But in the US, we (the right-wing) has been polarized beyond the point of sanity when it comes to politics. Someone would actually grab a gun, head to the pizzeria and threaten the lives of the people there to save the pandas. You know how bad the US is politically polarized? Donald Trump became President. The right-wing is so rage blinded by the Clintons that Donald "Grab them by the pussy" Trump, got elected President. This speaks more to the US than to Russia (at least regarding social media trolling).

The point might be, to hopefully rip some people out of their right-wing rage, when they realize they are being played. Of course... that can't happen... and our nation is potentially fucked. Blaming Russian influence in social media is probably like an overweight person blaming Keebler for making cookies.

 

[Trausti]

The point might be, to hopefully rip some people out of their right-wing rage, when they realize they are being played.

Oh Lordy. We just finished up the two-year Russia Collusion hoax and you think it's the right-wing that's being played?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Yeah, its all right wing people posting links to yournewswire, RT, Ruptly, etc... because the disinformation is having no impact. Censor it? Maybe not. But it needs to have a light on it.

Ya, that's my point. People are talking about it like it's some horribly illegal attack on the United States. If it was the Russian government trolling on Facebook, that's not actually anything except the Russian government trolling on Facebook. Yes, it's good to shed light on it and all, but ... so what?

Did you know that Justin Trudeau runs a panda trafficking program in the basement of a Pizzeria?

In Canada, you'd shrug it off and say, 'Sounds like Justin.'

But in the US, we (the right-wing) has been polarized beyond the point of sanity when it comes to politics. Someone would actually grab a gun, head to the pizzeria and threaten the lives of the people there to save the pandas. You know how bad the US is politically polarized? Donald Trump became President. The right-wing is so rage blinded by the Clintons that Donald "Grab them by the pussy" Trump, got elected President. This speaks more to the US than to Russia (at least regarding social media trolling).

The point might be, to hopefully rip some people out of their right-wing rage, when they realize they are being played. Of course... that can't happen... and our nation is potentially fucked.

But that still doesn't speak to why the Russian meddling is a big deal. That polarization was in US politics before they started doing it. The fear mongering and lying in political ads and campaigns predates them.

If a Senate candidate in Ohio was going on about how Canada is undercutting US jobs and more tariffs are needed at the border, I think it would be perfectly acceptable for the Canadian government to run ads talking about the benefits of free trade and how Ohio is better off with a free flow of goods across the border. If it's OK for foreign governments to argue for their interests and it's not illegal to lie and fear monger in political ads, someone putting the both of them together isn't a real issue.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Which is it? They aren't meddling or they are meddling but it is okay because other people do or have done it?

The latter. They are clearly meddling, but ... so what? They're posting shit on social media, not stuffing ballot boxes.

Exactly. Well, unless they actually are doing the latter. I wouldn't put it passed the Russians, or the Americans regarding other countries for that matter, to try to hack election machines or purge voting registration lists, etc. So when I first heard all the talk on the news about foreign meddling in the American election, I expected to be hearing about a lot more than ... talking to Americans.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Which is it? They aren't meddling or they are meddling but it is okay because other people do or have done it?

The latter. They are clearly meddling, but ... so what? They're posting shit on social media

Not exactly. They used a clandestine form of psychological warfare that was highly coordinated, long term and specifically targeted to cause certain emotionally driven effects among particular demographic groups in key swing states (namely to cause voter suppression primarily amongst "activist" young African American males and irrational emotional manipulation among rural white extremists).

As the evidence shows, the effects on strong-tie groups like the rural alr-right whites and the "activist" young black males not only had a direct influence on those groups, but there were also more indirect effects on their secondary tier friends and family.

not stuffing ballot boxes.

Well, again as the evidence actually shows, yes, they were, in effect, stuffing ballot boxes. Just not directly. Their actions, however, evidently amounted to the same thing, just on a very small scale that was nevertheless large enough (due to our idiosyncratic electoral college failsafe that ironically failed to keep us safe).

You may think that you are immune to any such effects--and you may well be--but evidently many hundreds of thousands of others are not immune to such effects.

It's a lot like saying, "So? It's a commercial. Who buys something just because they saw a commercial?" Well, aside from the fact that hundreds of billions of dollars a year are spent on commercials precisely because they do work, it's not about one commercial, it's about the accumulated effect of numerous repetitions of commercials targeted to appeal to a particular group played at certain times that they will watch it, etc., etc., etc. Only this would be more like if advertisers were able to beam the commercial directly into your brain without you realizing it and have it effect you in subconscious ways that don't ever rise to the level of your awareness.

And, again, no, it is NOT what every candidate does. Candidates must all clearly identify any of their messages (for precisely this reason; so as not to try to trick people into thinking it's not a political ad), but note, too, that even without a clandestine strategy, overt messaging also works.

And, again, since each candidate uses the same tools to their advantage, the benefits of such tools effectively cancel each other out in the sense of a technological advantage. Iow, each candidate gets a hammer. So the difference is in how skilled they are using the hammer to hit a nail squarely on its head.

The difference here, however, is that one candidate--whether knowingly or unknowingly--rigged his hammer with an unseen laser-guidance system that gave him a small, but ultimately significant advantage and in exactly the two areas that the IRA focused on from before the election even began; voter suppression amongst blacks and emotional enragement amongst alt-right rural whites in key swing states.

In short, everything we're talking about works to influence voters. Not necessarily en masse. Not necessarily on large scales. But in ways that make something like a 40,000 (or less than 1%) voting differential imminently obtainable by employing them.

That is, after all, the purpose of this thread; to evidence whether or not such activities could have accounted for the outcome. And the evidence so far presented does confirm that such a strategy could in fact easily account for such a small, but nevertheless significant shift. So the proof that a cyber influencing campaign like the one that Russia conducted (and is still conducting) could work to achieve the outcome we saw in 2016 is established.

Now, the question of whether or not Trump actively coordinated with that effort may still be up in the air, but likewise the evidence presented here certainly shows that someone--like a Roger Stone or a Steve Bannon or Paul Manafort--knew what the strategy was and knew that part of it required the large number of rallies to make it even more effective.

Hence the "permanent campaign" that we're seeing that, likewise, I believe pundits are misconstruing, just like his rallies. Note this from National Review back in 2017 (emphasis mine):

And then there are the rallies: There have now been eight in seven months. “It is not unusual for incumbent presidents to have political rallies to whip up their base and try to grow public support,” political scientist Mark Rozell, a dean at George Mason University, tells National Review. And indeed, past presidents also held rallies soon after winning office. In 2009, Obama held rallies to mobilize support for his health-care plan; in 2001, Bush held rallies to do the same with his tax plan; and in 1993, the Clintons held rallies to try and do the same with the president’s wife’s health-care plan. But these rallies were attempts to grow public support for particular policies: Obama, Bush, and Clinton kept things focused on their agendas. In contrast, Rozell says, “Trump’s rallies don’t have a specific policy focus, or any focus at all.”

Tuesday night’s bears that out. Trump’s remarks amounted to a 90-minute digression: from antifa, to his margin of victory in Arizona, to the scourge of fake news, to Sheriff Joe Arpaio, to Foxconn, to MS-13 terrorizing Long Island, to nominal GDP growth. Some of these topics, such as Sheriff Joe and the news media, are symbolic, the kind that burnished his tell-it-like-it-is credentials during the campaign. Others, such as bringing manufacturing back, are policy-oriented: the stuff of governing. But Trump assembles them all in a rhetorical collage. That “erosion of the lines between campaigning and governing,” Doherty tells National Review, is what happens when you try to do both at once.

If you find these rallies unusual, then, that’s because they are.

Unless one reads the conclusions found in the studies previously posted in regard to the part where the face-to-face reinforcement of emotional contagions among strong-tie groups is a strong component of the effectiveness of the influencing strategy. With that in mind, turn again to the National Review piece:

Some also find [the rallies] unnerving. Impropriety is an unmistakable part of Trump’s political strategy, though. What scares James Clapper excites Laura Ingraham, and, during the election, it was same with their respective audiences. People increasingly watch like-minded shows, read like-minded websites, and associate with like-minded people. In turn, the media have adapted to a changing market, catering to distinct clusters of people. Trump doesn’t have to worry about how his speech might play on the networks; that term, signifying a monolithic media, is obsolete. His rallies are instead “audience-specific,” political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg tells NR, “and he gets terrific coverage on the media that his base pays attention to.” Trump’s campaign delights who it’s supposed to delight, just like it did a year ago.

But if Trump prefers campaigns to governance, he could wind up widening the partisan divide. On Election Night, he vowed to “be president for all the citizens” of the country. A never-ending campaign, with rallies designed to please some and unnerve others, works against that goal. Perhaps the reaction of some of Trump’s opponents to Tuesday night’s rally was ill conceived. Perhaps the rally was, too.

The more you look at the findings of the studies I've posted the more the Trump strategy makes sense (when it did not prior) and the more it mirrors those findings.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

I expected to be hearing about a lot more than ... talking to Americans.

Great, then you came to the right thread, because nothing about what the Russians did was about "talking" to Americans as these studies clearly show. It was about manipulating them and influencing them over a long time period in numerous subconscious and clandestine ways that affected certain outcomes by pushing certain emotional buttons in a manner that made users unaware that they were being so manipulated.

You needn't take my word for it, of course. I presented the studies and showed their results. It's all right there for any honest intellectual pursuit.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I expected to be hearing about a lot more than ... talking to Americans.

Great, then you came to the right thread, because nothing about what the Russians did was about "talking" to Americans as these studies clearly show. It was about manipulating them and influencing them over a long time period in numerous subconscious and clandestine ways that affected certain outcomes by pushing certain emotional buttons in a manner that made users unaware that they were being so manipulated.

You needn't take my word for it, of course. I presented the studies and showed their results. It's all right there for any honest intellectual pursuit.

Subconscious and clandestine what exactly? Should we be playing the messages backwards looking for hidden messages? It l just looks to me like they made some targeted sales pitches and trolling. When I hear about grand scale interference in elections, I expect to hear more than that. Like Trump is a secret manchurian candidate and spy. Or the Russian hackers purged voting registration lists. Something more dramatic than social media posts.

They didn't beam anything into anyone's brain against their will, right? We write to each other on his very forum and people can read it. I'm not American and sometimes I talk about US politics. You may sometimes talk about other countries. Does that make us guilty of this same offence on a much smaller scale?

I think we need to recognize that Hillary lost her election not because of Russian secret agents or Bernie Bros or Comey, but because Hillary was a historically bad candidate that managed to lose to Donald Trump, and felt the need to go on a tour pointing her finger at others for her loss. You'll win the next election by not repeating the same mistake of pushing party royalty and instead listening to the people, and by not alienating people with self-entitlement or divisive political messages, and by selling hope and change, instead of more of the same people are sick of.

Obama did so much right that Hillary did wrong that it should be a political studies class comparing the two campaigns. Yes we can isntead of no, we can't. Hope and Change instead of Its good as it is. No red or blue America but United States of America, instead of baskets of deplorables etc. He's with you instead of I'm with her. Vote for him, instead of she's not as bad as her opponent. Not himself overplaying being black (and letting others point at that) whereas she never failed to mention her gender and breaking down that glass ceiling by electing her. Smooth and excellent speaking instead of sounding like a robot. The difference really is vast.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Here's more in regard to Trump's rallies. Again, keep in mind the findings of the studies that face-to-face reinforcement increases the effectiveness of the online influencing strategy while reading these speculative assessments of the rallies and how knowing that there may be an ulterior motive behind the rallies accordingly suddenly clarifies a lot of that speculation. Again, conventional wisdom was (absent factoring in these findings) that Trump was just an egotist that needed the constant attention, but note this from the New Yorker:

On Wednesday, Trump flouted convention and flew to Erie, Pennsylvania, for a political rally as one of the most intense hurricanes to hit the United States in decades pounded Florida. The President attributed his decision not to cancel to the thousands of people already lined up to hear him. “It’s a very important rally,” he told reporters. When he got there, however, even the usually reliable Fox News refused to carry the show, sticking with weather reports on the storm and its prime-time lineup. Even as Trump was onstage, Politico reported that Fox’s ratings for coverage of his recent rallies had dropped below those of its regular shows. (At one point, when I switched over to check Fox, not only was Trump still shut out but the Fox host was joking with a guest about emotional-support animals.) The only national network to air the Pennsylvania rally live was C-span 2.

Trump must have known that not even Fox was covering these things anymore, so why do them? If it's an ego boost, then one would think, anyway, that seeing them covered on his favorite network would be far more important to him. And although this piece was about the midterms, the reporter continues:

But I think it’s a mistake. The problem is that there are so many outrages, we are in danger of ignoring them, or dismissing them as mere spectacle. The torrent of Trump’s words is exhausting, contradictory, annoying, and more than occasionally amusing, and it’s fair to ask what some of it amounts to. I certainly don’t think all the networks need to air his remarks live and in full all the time. Still, tuning out the President is hardly the way to understand him. So I decided to watch all of Trump’s rallies in October, as he is stepping up his midterm campaigning.

The first thing to note is that there are a lot of them; the President has already done six so far, as the election draws near, spending, as the Washington Post put it, “sixty percent of the evenings in October so far” speaking to big crowds in Trump-friendly places like Johnson City, Tennessee; Southaven, Mississippi; Topeka, Kansas; Rochester, Minnesota; Council Bluffs, Iowa; and Erie. He has two more planned for this weekend. Trump is generally onstage for more than an hour, so that’s a lot of Trump. Six hours and fifty-one minutes of Trump, to be precise.

The headlines from these events are by now familiar: Trump’s celebration of his victimized but ultimately confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh; Trump’s mocking of Kavanaugh’s female accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, after he initially called her “very credible”; Trump’s escalating rhetoric about “wacko” Democrats as an “angry mob” that would destroy due process, even as the angry mob listening to him chanted “lock her up” at the mere mention of Dianne Feinstein, a senator not accused of any crime.

That leaves a lot of what would be considered news in any other moment. Among the things I heard the President of the United States do: make fun of a female candidate in Iowa by giving her a derogatory nickname. Accuse a U.S. senator of being a “drunk.” Claim that Hillary Clinton engaged in a conspiracy with Russia to rig the election (which she lost). He called the European Union a “brutal” alliance “formed to take advantage of us.” He attacked American libel laws and the World Trade Organization.

In short, he's very clearly reinforcing emotional contagions. Face-to-face and among strong-tie groups (his extremist alt-right fans).

- - - Updated - - -

Subconscious and clandestine what exactly?

Read the studies.

 

[Trausti]

Subconscious and clandestine what exactly?

The Ruskies spent $100K on Facebook memes. $100K MEMES! That's practically a declaration of nuclear war!

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Don't forget the emotional contagions Trausti. It's intellectual germ warfare.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

So when a company tries to convince you to drink Coke instead of Pepsi, is that also psychological warfare?

These are essentially ads. If they managed to have a successful ad campaign, that’s fine so long as they do nothing beyond attempts to convince.

 

[ZiprHead]

This is all very bizarre. Is Russia accused of hacking voting machines, taking voters off of voter lists, etc? Or is Russia just accused of ... talking to Americans?

Yes, they were just "talking to Americans".

You seem to have a tendency to leave your mind so open your brain falls out.

 

[ZiprHead]

That started with:



Did you miss that part?



As Politico noted at the time:



Going into ST, Trump had already secured 82 delegates. On ST he picked up 256 more for a total of 338 coming out of ST. Cruz only had 236 total coming out of ST.

Is that a phrase you use to mean "ahead"?

No, that's the phrase I use to mean Cruz never had a chance after Super Tuesday:

Trump’s victories in the South — winning Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama easily — on Tuesday were particularly bad news for Cruz, who has called Super Tuesday “the single most important day in the entire Republican primary.”

The slate of southern states that voted — heavily populated with conservative and evangelical Christians — were supposed to be Cruz’s bulwark but Trump carried evangelicals over Cruz by wide margins in many places, leading by 25 percent in Alabama, 19 percent in Tennessee and 15 percent in Georgia, according to exit polls.

Cruz did carry Texas by a decisive margin — which he had declared a must-win — and finished a clear first in next door Oklahoma, as well. In Alaska, he took 36 percent to Trump's 33.5 percent.
...
Rubio had tried to cast Cruz as a failure even before the polls closed. “Tonight was supposed to be Ted Cruz's big night,” Rubio told reporters in Minnesota. “I mean, his whole campaign was built on his Super Tuesday strategy.”

“If you can't sweep up Super Tuesday, where in this country are you going to have a big showing?” Rubio said of Cruz, though the sentiment could easily be applied to his own candidacy.

By Super Tuesday II (i.e., fourteen days later), Trump had the momentum and the predictive percentages of delegates in the key states to see where things were going. He picked up 229 delegates to Cruz's 51. That trend only continued and by April it was all over.

But this isn't about reliving the possibilities open to underdogs in a race that hasn't happened. This is about applying hindsight to a race that's over, in regard to what we now know about how effective was the Russian influence.

As many people--Republicans and Democrats alike--said at the time and still say, Trump never should have got anywhere near the numbers he received. He was a terrible candidate, broke every rule, said and did despicable things constantly.

In the desperation to try to explain how that was working, pundits and reporters--who were not aware of the clandestine emotional influence warfare that had laid the groundwork for Trump for about three years prior--the only "explanations" were straw grasping. Trump seemed to speak their language and say the things that they wanted to hear and was tapping into dormant emotional hot-buttons (like fears of muslims and the economy and Obama hatred) etc.

What seemed to be the case, however, was evidently not the case; at least not in the way it was being manipulated. Again, if you gradually turn the heat up over several years--and particularly among those with strongly held ties and extremist opinions to begin with who then, over those years, spread that emotional contagion to their secondary ties, who in turn spread it to their secondary ties, etc--then by the time you introduce the catalyst (Trump) all he has to do is trigger those extreme emotions (which he did literally in the first official words he says). That's the lighting of the fuse of the powderkegs already stoked and put in place. From the Oxford study:

In early 2016, just over half (3,799 of 7,451) of all organic posts were for campaigns targeting conservative users (Being Patriotic, Heart of Texas, South United, and Stop All Invaders). This content prior to Trump’s securing the Republican nomination was not particularly oriented towards his campaign. In 2015, there are relatively few mentions of him on these campaigns targeting conservative voters. Rather, they stressed (and inflated) the harms of immigration, with a particular focus on Muslims and terrorism. Many ads focused on President Obama, accusing him of being a Muslim, building on ongoing biased reporting on Obama. While antagonism towards Muslims and President Obama were common in 2015, the majority of posts were positive stories about members of the armed services and patriotic slogans, often consistent with the content in the sponsored ads. Explicit mentions of Donald Trump increased in early and mid-2016, as his primary campaign gained momentum. These campaigns, however, seemed to be geared towards extending the anti-immigrant rhetoric that Trump’s campaign frequently made use of.

[Fake Accounts Like] United Muslims of America significantly increased its activity in this period, as did Blacktivist. For Blacktivist, United Muslims of America, and LGBT United, organic posts in the primary season were not particularly focused on any candidates—for example little mention is made of Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. During this time, Blacktivist tended to post information on attacks on African Americans by police officers, Black Lives Matter, and messages about slavery and ongoing discrimination and mass incarceration affecting African Americans. United Muslims of America tended to provide a positive image of Islam and Muslims and often condemned terrorist attacks across the world. There is little evidence to suggest that during the primaries, these campaigns were focused on ongoing political campaigns by Clinton, Sanders, or Trump. Instead, the goal may have been to create a following for these pages, laying the foundation to later push content to audiences in 2016

And that's what the primaries showed; a lit fuse touching off strategic powderkegs that rapidly formed an inexorable momentum where Trump kept inexplicably and progressively winning, always out ahead of the field when conventional wisdom--hell, unconventional wisdom--was that he should not be on the stage after the first month of the shit he pulled, let alone the first day. Cruz only got a shot in the arm by winning his home state; something everyone expected. In regard to Super Tuesday, however, he got decimated, which was not expected. Quite the opposite in fact.

Again, could it be that Trump was just magic in a bottle; the right man at the right time? That was certainly the narrative that formed without what we now know about the Russian emotional contagion groundwork and influence.

And note too, of course, that the influence has been so desperately denied and attacked and downplayed right from the start--and still continues--in a manner that instantly betrayed its importance long before any of these studies came out. And the more we find out about the effects--such as the research presented here, which is still not exhaustive, as the studies all reiterate--the bigger the impact of the influence becomes.

Put it this way, if we simply remove partisanship from the equation and just look at these events with dispassion and pure calculation, then what would we expect would happen given the information already presented itt? We would expect a consistent, yet inexplicable momentum of wins for the catalyst candidate among the strongest allied group (in this case that would be Republicans) and that's exactly what we saw in the Republican primaries.

Trying to influence non-allied groups--in this case, Democrats--to nevertheless change their minds and vote for your preferred Republican candidate would not be in keeping with the findings of any of these studies. It wouldn't work, iow.

So what would the findings say would work? A campaign to discourage voting, particularly among minorities, such as African Americans, who are stronger-tied groups.

And what did we see happen? Voter turnout among African Americans dropped:

A record 137.5 million Americans voted in the 2016 presidential election, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Overall voter turnout – defined as the share of adult U.S. citizens who cast ballots – was 61.4% in 2016, a share similar to 2012 but below the 63.6% who say they voted in 2008.

A number of long-standing trends in presidential elections either reversed or stalled in 2016, as black voter turnout decreased, white turnout increased and the nonwhite share of the U.S. electorate remained flat since the 2012 election.
...
The black voter turnout rate declined for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election, falling to 59.6% in 2016 after reaching a record-high 66.6% in 2012. The 7-percentage-point decline from the previous presidential election is the largest on record for blacks. (It’s also the largest percentage-point decline among any racial or ethnic group since white voter turnout dropped from 70.2% in 1992 to 60.7% in 1996.) The number of black voters also declined, falling by about 765,000 to 16.4 million in 2016, representing a sharp reversal from 2012. With Barack Obama on the ballot that year, the black voter turnout rate surpassed that of whites for the first time. Among whites, the 65.3% turnout rate in 2016 represented a slight increase from 64.1% in 2012.

As Nate Silver noted:

But if there was one area where Democratic turnout was undeniably weaker in 2016 than 2012, it was among African-Americans — and this is borne out in my own analysis of the 2016 voter files, which consisted of comparing actual 2016 turnout to pre-election modeled turnout expectations. While most of the conversation around electoral demographics has focused on the growing Latino population, African-Americans are still the most electorally influential nonwhite group because they make up a larger share of the voting population both in the U.S. overall and in swing states in particular. And for Democrats, the influence of black voters is further amplified because, as a group, they vote for Democratic candidates by such large margins. Clinton won about 66 percent of Latino voters, compared to Trump’s 28 percent; she won African-American voters 89 percent to 8 percent.

Much has been made about this, but note that 89% is still huge. Obama only took 93% in 2012 (a 4 point difference).

Further, according to PEW:

[W]hites made up 73.3% of voters in 2016, a share unchanged from 2012, when they accounted for 73.7%. Meanwhile, blacks made up 11.9% of voters in 2016, down from 12.9% in 2012.

That's only a 0.6% differential.

Further from Nate Silver:

(B)lack turnout declined nearly uniformly across all the swing states in 2016
...
Turnout did not decline equally among all parts of the African-American electorate. The dropoff was particularly steep among men, and especially young men. Across the swing states for which we have voter files, turnout among black men aged 18-29 was 22 percent lower than 2012 levels, while it rose 7 percent among white men in the same age group. Age aside, we also see steeper differences in turnout rates along gender lines among African-Americans than any other racial group.

Who did the Russians target? Young black "activist" (i.e., strong-tie) males in swing states:

Two new reports on Russia’s widespread online influence campaign detail how purported Russian trolls used social media to target with laser-like precision the African-American vote ahead of the 2016 presidential election, and then continued to sow social and political discord in the U.S. in the months after President Donald Trump was elected.

The reports, prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee by outside researchers at Oxford University and the social network analysis firm Graphika, as well as the cybersecurity firm New Knowledge with input from researchers at Columbia University and Canfield Research, are the result of the analysis of millions of social media engagements. They provide some of the most detailed views yet of the purported influence campaign by Russia’s St. Petersburg-based troll factory known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA).

Among the findings, New Knowledge’s report says that the Russians “created an expansive cross-platform media mirage targeting the Black community, which shared and cross-promoted authentic Black media to create an immersive influence ecosystem.”

For example, New Knowledge identified a “Black Matters” campaign that the IRA ran like a “midsized media ‘brand,’” with its own dedicated Facebook pages, Twitter account, Instagram account, YouTube videos, Tumblr page, Google ads, Facebook ads and even an associated SoundCloud account. That “brand,” however, was just part of a larger online network where it was intertwined with other IRA content targeting African-Americans as well as legitimate African-American-focused pages and accounts.

“The degree of integration into authentic Black community media was not replicated in the otherwise Right-leaning or otherwise Left-leaning content,” the report says.

The Oxford report says one goal was to persuade African-Americans to boycott the election or to follow incorrect voting procedures to suppress the vote.

More specifically, from the New Knowledge study (which, btw, is a new study to this thread that I have not fully explored yet, so expect more):

Some of the most sophisticated IRA efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted Black American communities. Although they produced content targeting many political and cultural groups, the IRA created a uniquely expansive, interlinked fraudulent Black media ecosystem consisting of their own sites interwoven with authentic Black media and Black-owned small businesses to a degree not seen with other communities or groups. These efforts exploited organic American protest movements and focused on widespread, pre-existing societal issues.
...
The ads cross-promoted IRA Pages – for example, Instagram accounts @_born__black_ and Facebook Page Blackluive promoted Black Matters content, likely with the goal of increasing the perception of legitimacy and popularity for the media properties, and further encompassing targeted groups within the IRA’s media mirage. The ads also directed users to outside sites owned by the IRA. Blackmatters.us, Donotshoot.us, black4black.info, dudeers.com, hilltendo.com, musicfb.info were IRA-created domains. Bonfirefunds, another outside site, is a custom t-shirt making platform that was used by Black Matters. Represent.com sold custom shirts for BM, Black4Black, Fit Black, Nefertiti’s Community, Pan-African Roots, Williams & Kalvin, Blacktivist, and Woke Blacks. The merchandise strategy, discussed in the Instagram section in this report (that is where it was most prevalent), enabled fundraising, brand building, and the collection of addresses and potentially credit card information.

Meetup.com was used to organize black self-defense classes for the Fit Black/Black Fist IRA accounts. The vast majority of the ads achieved substantially higher clickthrough rates (CTR) than typical Facebook ads; according to Wordstream Advertising Benchmarks, the average CTR for Facebook across all industries in .9% (as of August 2018). Although the IRA ran its ads earlier, from 2015-2017, 1182 of the 1306 unique ads in the dataset provided by Facebook (90%) that had documented spend achieved a CTR higher than .9%. This suggests that the Internet Research Agency had well-defined audiences, and reached them with resonant content. This perception is reinforced by the October 2018 Department of Justice indictment, which highlights the degree to which the IRA prioritized understanding the interests and communication styles of groups it targeted.

And from the Oxford study (note, once again, the bit about organic content, which is clandestine):

While there were many campaigns, a handful resulted in significant user engagement: the vast majority of the organic posting activity was concentrated in 81 pages, which produced 67,502 organic posts between them. Almost all the engagement by users, that is, shares, likes, and comments, was received by only 20 pages, representing 99.6% of all engagement (Table 5). These 20 pages primarily targeted African American users and conservatives. In total, IRA content was shared by about 31 million users, liked by almost 39 million users, garnered almost 5.4 million emoji reactions, and generated almost 3.5 million comments.
...
It is evident that the campaigns sought to demobilize African Americans, LGBT, and liberal voters. This was attempted through organic posts that attacked Hillary Clinton. Content referred to President Clinton’s 2016 signing into law of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as an attack on the gay community, and in another, argued that Hillary supports Muslims, who the post insinuates are anti-gay. Attacks on Clinton and calls for voter disengagement were particularly clear in Blacktivist during September, October, and November 2016, with statements such as “NO LIVES MATTER TO HILLARY CLINTON. ONLY VOTES MATTER TO HILLARY CLINTON” (Blacktivist, 29 October 2016), another one argues that black people should vote for Jill Stein (Blacktivist, 7 October 2016), or not vote at all, with the claim: “NOT VOTING is a way to exercise our rights” (Blacktivist, 3 November 2016).

It should also be noted that Black Voters Propelled Blue Wave, Study Finds in the 2018 Midterms:

The report by the NAACP, the racial justice nonprofit Advancement Project, and the political action group African American Research Collaborative found that across competitive elections 90 percent of black voters supported Democratic House candidates, compared to 53 percent of voters overall. It also found 91 percent of black women, 86 percent of black men and 50 percent of white voters believe Trump and the GOP are using toxic rhetoric to divide the nation.

“This poll dispels the myth of black voter apathy,” said Judith Browne Dianis, Advancement Project executive director. “Clearly black voters are not only engaged, but they are central to the resistance against Trumpism.”

Again, Hillary got 89% of the black vote, so what are we seeing in 2016? Small, yet significant changes--or, rather, that became significant only in regard to the electoral college, but not in regard to the popular vote--exactly like those described in the findings of these studies.

The black vote was suppressed enough while the white vote was boosted enough to make a small change significant, but only in regard to the electoral college.

Again, set aside for ten seconds any partisan-ship. Pretend, if you prefer, that the roles were flipped and we're talking about a Clinton win with the help of Russian clandestine emotional contagion. The correlations between the findings in these studies and what happened in both the GOP primaries and the general are nearly one to one.

And considering, once again, that both sides employed overt tactics that effectively cancel each other out in regard to even playing field, the fact that one side had a clandestine laser-guiding system on their hammer evidently turned the otherwise inexplicable tide.

Or, if you still don't buy that as what actually happened, the evidence here establishes that it certainly could have happened as speculated. Iow, the evidence that Russian influence could have been sufficient on its own to result in the outcome we saw has, at the very least, been demonstrated.

That is obviously significant, because the first hurdle any such theory must get over is whether or not it could work. So far, I believe the evidence presented here shows that in abundance. And the evidence is just starting to come in.

So your thesis is that Black people are unable to think for themselves?

That's what you got out of all that?

 

[ZiprHead]

DHS, FBI say election systems in all 50 states were targeted in 2016

A joint intelligence bulletin (JIB) has been issued by the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation to state and local authorities regarding Russian hacking activities during the 2016 presidential election. While the bulletin contains no new technical information, it is the first official report to confirm that the Russian reconnaissance and hacking efforts in advance of the election went well beyond the 21 states confirmed in previous reports.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

DHS, FBI say election systems in all 50 states were targeted in 2016

A joint intelligence bulletin (JIB) has been issued by the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation to state and local authorities regarding Russian hacking activities during the 2016 presidential election. While the bulletin contains no new technical information, it is the first official report to confirm that the Russian reconnaissance and hacking efforts in advance of the election went well beyond the 21 states confirmed in previous reports.

See, that's a real thing and an attack against the US by a foreign power.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

The New Knowledge study offers more insights into the breadth of the clandestine strategy (emphasis mine):

The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) began an investigation into the IRA’s social media activities following the 2016 election around the same time that investigative journalists and third-party researchers became aware that IRA’s campaign had touched all major platforms in the social network ecosystem. In March 2018, some of the social platform companies misused by the IRA (Twitter, Facebook, and Alphabet) provided the SSCI with data related to IRA influence operations. Facebook’s data submission includes Facebook Page posts and Instagram account content. Alphabet’s data submission includes Google AdWords and YouTube video and channel data. The data set reveals that Alphabet’s subsidiaries YouTube, G+, Gmail, and Google Voice were each leveraged to support the creation and validation of false personas.

Evidence provided by these companies to SSCI ties the IRA operation to widespread activity on other popular social platforms including Vine, Gab, Meetup, VKontakte, and LiveJournal. Several complete websites were created to host original written content, and to provide source material for related social accounts and personas. The breadth of the attack included games, browser extensions, and music apps created by the IRA and pushed to targeted groups, including US teenagers. The popular game Pokémon Go was incorporated into the operation, illustrating the fluid, evolving, and innovative tactical approach the IRA leveraged to interfere in US politics and culture.

Several platforms that confirmed the presence of IRA interference operations (Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Medium) were not part of the formal SSCI investigation or data requests, and that content was not included in the SSCI data set. They have cooperated with law enforcement, and their information has been incorporated into a parallel Department of Justice investigation; the Mueller indictment of Russian nationals, Netyksho et al, dated 07/13/18, specifically references Tumblr-based interference operations. In the interest of thorough analysis, New Knowledge took initiative to also analyze relevant data from Reddit, Tumblr, and Pinterest in addition to the data set provided by SSCI.
...
Instagram was a significant front in the IRA’s influence operation, something that Facebook executives appear to have avoided mentioning in Congressional testimony.
ƒ
There were 187 million engagements on Instagram. Facebook estimated that this was across 20 million affected users. There were 76.5 million engagements on Facebook; Facebook estimated that the Facebook operation reached 126 million people. It is possible that the 20 million is not accounting for impact from regrams, which may be difficult to track because Instagram does not have a native sharing feature.

In regard to African-Americans:

Extensive Operations Targeting Black-American Communities

• The most prolific IRA efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted Black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing Black audiences and recruiting Black Americans as assets.
• The IRA created an expansive cross-platform media mirage targeting the Black community, which shared and cross-promoted authentic Black media to create an immersive influence ecosystem.
• The IRA exploited the trust of their Page audiences to develop human assets, at least some of whom were not aware of the role they played. This tactic was substantially more pronounced on Black-targeted accounts.
• The degree of integration into authentic Black community media was not replicated in the otherwise Right-leaning or otherwise Left-leaning content.
  ...
  Based on publicly available open-source research, Twitter’s release of 10 million IRA tweets, and the United States House of Representatives’ release of the Facebook ad data, there is a prevailing narrative that the Internet Research Agency was focused on dividing Americans, and that the operation’s focus on elections was merely a small subset of that activity. While accurate, this narrative misses nuance and deserves more contextualization in light of the additional material contained in the Google and YouTube data set, and the collection of the hundreds of thousands of non-ad “organic” memes and posts provided to SSCI. The IRA had a roster of themes, primarily social issues, that they repeatedly emphasized and reinforced across their Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube content.
  
  These recurring topics were grouped thematically on Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts designed to reinforce community and culture and to foster feelings of pride. The material can be classified into three broad groups: Black-targeted, politically Left-targeted, and politically Right-targeted. While other distinct ethnic and religious groups were the focus of one or two Facebook Pages or Instagram accounts, the Black community was targeted extensively with dozens; this is why we have elected to assess the messaging directed at Black Americans as a distinct and significant operation for purposes of this report.
  
  While media narratives around the Russian/IRA Twitter activity have often focused on automation and bots, the agency ran human-operated precision personas that roughly mapped to the same Black, Left, and Right clusters observed on Facebook and Instagram. The personas were spontaneous and responsive, engaging with real users (famous influencers and media as well as regular people), participating in real-time conversations, creating polls, and playing hashtag games. These personas developed relationships with American citizens. They were designed to influence individuals and to shape narratives; the IRA appears to have attempted to solidify the positioning of well-developed Twitter accounts as influencers by alluding to them by name or screenshot in their posts on other platforms (i.e., TEN_GOP’s Twitter content shared on the Facebook account Stand for Freedom). The Twitter personas regularly retweeted content by prominent and influential public figures; they were occasionally retweeted by influencers in return. The automated accounts were primarily news-focused, and largely limited to tweeting headlines and retweeting other accounts.
  
  In addition to memetic content and tweets, the IRA pushed narratives with longform blog content. They created media properties, websites designed to produce stories that would resonate with those targeted. It appears, based on the data set provided by Alphabet, that the IRA may have also expanded into think tank-style communiques. One such page, previously unattributed to the] IRA but included in the Alphabet data, was GI Analytics, a geopolitics blog with an international masthead that included American authors. This page was promoted via AdWords and YouTube videos; it has strong ties to more traditional Russian propaganda networks, which will be discussed later in this analysis. GI Analytics wrote articles articulating nuanced academic positions on a variety of sophisticated topics. From the site’s About page:
  
  
  “Our purpose and mission are to provide high-quality analysis at a time when we
  are faced with a multitude of crises, a collapsing global economy, imperialist wars,
  environmental disasters, corporate greed, terrorism, deceit, GMO food, a migration
  crisis and a crackdown on small farmers and ranchers.”​
  
  And, finally, in service to these themes, the IRA co-opted the names of real groups with existing reputations serving the targeted communities - including United Muslims of America, Cop Block, Black Guns Matter, and L for Life. This was perhaps an attempt to loosely backstop an identity if a curious individual did a Google Search, or to piggyback on an established brand.
  ...
  By far the most content was related to Black Lives Matter & police brutality: 1063 videos split across 10 different channels (59% of the channels, 96% of the content). 571 had title keywords related to the police and focused on police abuses. In light of this, YouTube’s statement before the first Senate tech hearing – “These channels’ videos were not targeted to the U.S. or to any particular sector of the U.S. population” – is perhaps using ‘target’ in the paid sense, but appears disingenuous.

• 
  
  Recall, once again, the fact that younger black males in particular were the largest percentage of the black vote that did not turn out. Again, NOT en masse; in a very small percentage. The exact percentage range that other studies show to be effective.
  
  And recall the fact that the Facebook study, for example, only impacted upwards of 700,000 users without their knowledge. This is in regard to just the use of Twitter by the IRA (emphasis mine):
  
  

  The IRA developed a collection of over 3841 persona accounts on Twitter; approximately 1.4 million people engaged with their tweets. They generated 72,801,807 engagements on their original content (not including retweets that they amplified, but which were written by others).
  ...
  Our impression of the IRA’s Twitter operation is that it was largely opportunistic real-time chatter; a collection of accounts, for example, regularly played hashtag games. There was a substantial amount of retweeting. By contrast, Facebook and Instagram were used to develop deeper relationships, to create a collection of substantive cultural media pages dedicated to continual reinforcement of in-group and out-group ideals for targeted audiences. Twitter was, however, a part of the cross-platform brand building tactic; several of the Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and Reddit pages had associated Twitter accounts.

  
  So, again, we're not talking about one post in isolation. We're talking about an extensive, years long immersive "ecosystem" (or, perhaps "echo-system" should be coined). The influence was subtle, complex and from numerous angles.
  
  And, again, it was NOT "every person was brainwashed?" No. It's not binary. It works, but on a small, yet nevertheless significant scale which in turn ONLY matters to us because of our electoral system. If we didn't have that system still in place, none of this would have mattered.
  
  The point being, of course, that the weapon was designed to fit the battlefield, if you will. Which is further evidence that it was not just a general attempt to sow discord or cause general mayhem. It was very precisely tuned and targeted to benefit one person only, Donald Trump. And the planning/strategy and infastructure was all established as early as 2013 at the latest.
  
  It's a tailored suit, iow, that fit one man; a man, who, in turn, had to have been profiled for years prior to 2013 in order to even come up with the idea that any such attempt could work. And since we know (1) that Putin had already tested out his cyber warfare tactics to great success prior and (2) Trump has been profiled extensively by Russian intelligence since the late seventies, well, it's a perfectly fitted suit.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

So when a company tries to convince you to drink Coke instead of Pepsi, is that also psychological warfare?

In a sense, sure, but the difference is that it's overt. It tells you what it is, iow. Why do you think "product placement" in movies and on TV shows is such a lucrative innovation and why there was such a huge movement to first get characters to smoke in movies and then stop characters from smoking in movies (and now, apparently, get them to smoke again)? Because there is a measurable difference in direct, or overt influencing tactics as opposed to more indirect, or clandestine influencing tactics.

They both work (on small scales), but clandestine methods are more effective than overt methods online, precisely because your guard is down.

Again, this is why, by law, candidates must clearly indicate their commercials are in fact their commercials ("I approve this message"). Same with PACs.

Hell, US TV Networks voluntarily set standards to not show anyone actually drinking beer in beer commercials. You can hold one and look like you're about to drink it, but that's usually when the camera cuts away to some bimbo in a bikini.

These are essentially ads. If they managed to have a successful ad campaign, that’s fine so long as they do nothing beyond attempts to convince.

As I believe I have shown in abundance, the in-depth steps they took that went "beyond attempts to convince" should address that point sufficiently by now, but if not, remember that this is just beginning to come out and we STILL don't have all of the information; the full extent. Both the New Knowledge study and the Oxford University study reiterate that there is still more missing data not revealed yet from either government sources or the social media platforms themselves.

So even with incomplete data sets, they are still showing how effective these clandestine, organic tactics can be to influence your behavior without you knowing it.

Again, it's not turning anyone into Manchurian Candidates; it's not fundamentally changing you from a man into a woman or anything. It is very very gradually immersing highly targeted "strong-tie" groups, where its effect is the most prominent, but we're still only talking in very small percentages per impression. But on a large enough population, those small percentages can add up to a large enough percentage to impact a percentage-based system like our electoral college.

No EC and this wouldn't be an issue and they likely would not have bothered. Again, the weapon was crafted to the conditions of the battlefield and that point merely goes to intent and coordination. Someone on Trump's team, at the very least, had to know what the strategy was in order to make it as effective as it possibly could be and that's the key (if, in fact, Trump was just a useful idiot in all of this and truly had no idea how he was being manipulated, which is a possibility, but strains incredulity).

So that means Stone, Bannon or Manafort (or a combination of some kind) had to have known--or been given marching orders from someone who had to have known--what the strategy entailed and what needed to be done by Trump--the catalyst--to help ensure its success.

And, again, this isn't binary. Putin would have known from his own use of these tactics in Russia and the Ukraine that it could work, but that doesn't mean normal real-world dynamics aren't still a factor. For all anyone would have known back in 2013/2014/2015/2016 is that all of their efforts could have failed at any time.

That fact, however, never stops anyone from conspiring to try to effect such changes, so it's not a magical ball situation with 100% success and every single person on social media was turned into mindless zombies.

What the evidence I've presented so far shows is that the IRA targeted primarily younger "strong-tie" black males (ie., activists) and alt-right "strong-tie" rural whites (i.e., "deplorables"). The effects of this type of influence are very small (on the order of 1% or less) and impact not only the core target group, but also the secondary tier friends and family, but for that to be effective, it evidently requires more direct reinforcement by a catalyst (i.., Trump holding so many rallies, where he triggers the emotional contagions already planted).

What did we see in the outcome? A small, but significant decrease in black voter turnout (primarily among younger black males); a small percentage increase in rural whites voting along emotional lines; a less than 1% voting differential in select counties in just three key "blue" states.

Is this the exact cause? Don't know that (yet). The point being made here is that it could be the exact cause, meaning that the conditions are all established and evidenced.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Ah, damn it dude. You really need to turn it off and get outside. Nice out here.

I fourth this. Russians beaming thoughts and "emotional contagions" into your mind by merely talking is tin foil hat level thinking.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Here is the New Knowledge study on the breadth of the Facebook campaign:

The Facebook data provided included posts from 81 unique Pages, of which 33 had over 1000 followers. Of these 33, fourteen major pages focused on Black audiences, five were aimed at Left-leaning audiences, one was a travel-focused older page, and thirteen targeted Right-leaning audiences. Overall, 30 targeted Black audiences and amassed 1,187,810 followers; 25 targeted the Right and amassed 1,446,588 followers, and 7 targeted the Left and amassed 689,045 followers. The remaining 19 were a sporadic collection of pages with almost no posts and approximately 2000 followers across them.

As mentioned in the opening section of this report, there were 76.5 million engagements across 3.3 million Page followers. These included 30.4 million shares, 37.6 million likes, 3.3 million comments, and 5.2 million reactions across the content. Since Facebook did not provide data about any sockpuppet accounts involved in the distribution of the content or the existence of “fake Likes” from these accounts, we are operating under the assumption that this engagement was from real people, and that this content was pushed into the Newsfeeds of their Friends as well.

And additional points on the Instagram portion:

The Instagram accounts followed similar Group alignments targeting Black, Left, and Right leaders. Many of the Facebook pages had associated Instagram accounts as part of the cross-platform co-branding strategy described earlier. Instagram was perhaps the most effective platform for the Internet Research Agency. Approximately 40% of its accounts achieved over 10,000 followers (a level colloquially referred to as “micro-influencers” by marketers); twelve accounts had over 100,000 followers (“influencer” level).

For those who don't know what "influencers" are, they exactly what you'd think and companies spend millions of dollars to get the top influencers to post anything about their brands for equally obvious reasons. Because they influence their followers, so, for example, those twelve accounts influence a total of 1.2 million like-thinking followers. And, remember, Instagram skews toward younger audiences (18-34), so we're talking primarily about the college-aged youth vote and "Millennials."

And here's an example of the kind of psychological warfare I'm referring to:

One unique account on Instagram that targeted a micro-group that was not segmented out separately on Facebook was the account @feminism_tag. It was the IRA’s version of an intersectional feminist account, and posted extensively about feminism and social justice. The @feminism_tag account is unique in that it did not logo-brand its content; instead, it largely – perhaps entirely – repurposed other accounts’ memes from the #feminism hashtag. For example, it drew extensively from the Instagram content of an inspirational t-shirt company, @expression_tees, mentioning it 136 times. The IRA may have co-opted the brand to run its own version of expressiontees as well; there is a dormant Twitter account here: https://twitter.com/expression_tees with some pro-Trump shares that seem incongruous with the Instagram account’s content. On the political front, @feminism_tag – although perhaps the most likely to support Secretary Clinton based simply on the persona demographics – was a staunch supporter of Bernie Sanders, vehemently opposed to Hillary Clinton. The account actively worked to undermine traditional feminist narratives underpinning support for Secretary Clinton.

Again, it's not about big, fundamental changes; it's about small, incremental nudges. But on a huge scale:

The Instagram and Facebook engagement statistics belie the claim that this was a small operation – it was far more than only $100,000 of Facebook ads, as originally asserted by Facebook executives. The ad engagements were a minor factor in a much broader, organically-driven influence operation. While a majority of IRA activity was unsuccessful, the top Facebook and Instagram accounts achieved hundreds of thousands of followers and millions of engagements. Instagram account @blackstagram_, perhaps their most successful property, was regularly getting upwards of 10,000 Likes on its posts by 2017. Facebook estimated that the content was seen by 126 million users on Facebook, and 20 million Instagram users. This is because Shares on Facebook would have pushed the content into the feeds of other users on Facebook, and there is no comparable virality engine on Instagram. However, as researchers on our team have previously pointed out, the Instagram number is likely lower than it should be.

Again, recall, that the Facebook study from 2012 was only conducted on about 700,000 users and then only in regard to a simple, general influencing effect, not a prolonged, years-long, specifically targeted, multi-platform sustained campaign impacting 126 million users on Facebook alone.