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Troll hunting: How 2 Clemson professors are working to thwart social media disinformation – Greenville News


After the Iowa Caucus in February, a reporter at CNN contacted Darren Linvill, a Clemson University professor, about a tweet he thought had come from a Russian troll, or agent of the Russian state who uses fake social media accounts to influence and engage with Americans. 

“An account had retweeted an NBC tweet from three elections ago when (Joe) Biden had dropped out of the election,” Linvill said. “But when you retweet it, most people don’t look at the date, they just see that Biden has dropped out of the election.”

In 2008, then-Senator Joe Biden ran as a Democratic candidate for president before joining nominee Barack Obama’s ticket as vice president. 

Eventually, the tweet began to make its way around the social media platform. 

“And so thousands of people were thinking that Biden dropped out of the (2020) election because of this one person.” 

Linvill said he analyzed the tweet – one of the thousands he’s looked at for his research on social media disinformation – to see if the account belonged to a Russian troll. 

“It was clearly just some ‘Bernie bro’ trying to be cute,” he said, referencing the moniker for Sen. Bernie Sanders young, internet-savvy male supporters.

“I think a lot of people misconstrue social media trolls, or at least the professional trolls. I mean, we all know most trolls on social media are just … jerks,” Linvill said.

But sometimes, the trolls are professional and hired by Russia, China or Iran to spread influence, news and agendas to the millions of Americans on dozens of social media platforms. 

Linvill and his research partner, Patrick Warren, study how state-sponsored disinformation visibly influences American politics and ideologies through social media. Linvill and Warren work with Twitter, journalists and sometimes Facebook to identify troll accounts and shut them down. 

The goal of these accounts is to drive America apart, to “further entrench” Americans into their ideological silos, which makes compromise and civility harder to maintain, Linvill explained. 

“You can’t compromise with somebody you’re disgusted with – if they are less than human. If your beliefs are disgusting to me, then you’re not even worth talking to. You have to be defeated, not compromised with and then government breaks down.”

Here’s how the Trolls operate:

“They’re pretending to be your friend”

The fake accounts tweet mundane, positive things, often becoming apart of an online community, Linvill said. But for every 50 happy or funny messages they tweet, a troll account might send one or two extreme or radical messages.

“The professionals aren’t trying to be your enemy. They’re not trying to make you angry,” Linvill said. “They’re pretending to be your friend. And they do that in order to entrench people in the most extreme ideologies and to make those extreme ideologies appear more prevalent than they are in real life.”

Spinning the headlines

The trolls don’t typically spread “fake news,” as many people think, Linvill said. Instead, they spread real news in a slanted way. 

“So they link to a lot of articles from CNN or the New York Times, but when they make the post, they’re telling you how you need to think about that article. So they’re priming you before you even go to the link.”

The also try to spin public perception of activists groups. 

The Post & Courier reported last month that Russia, under the guise of a civil rights group Black Matters US, attempted to stage a rally in front of the Charleston AME Church where a white supremacist had fatally shot nine Black churchgoers that same year.  

Pretty girls, veterans and people of color

To spread their influence, Linvill said the trolls use demographics that conservatives and liberals find most influential.

“Being a Black woman is very effective on Twitter for a lot of reasons,” he said. Because the trolls can hide behind these personas many people trust, they are able to wield more influence, Linvill explained.

The trolls also use highly professional marketing techniques to sell their influence, much like advertising agencies. 

“Professional trolls use techniques that were first developed by Madison Avenue PR and marketing firms … they sell ideology in the same way the Budweiser sells beer – with pretty girls and veterans.”

Russians ‘making a bad problem worse’

On Wednesday, Feb. 19, President Donald Trump attended a rally in Phoenix, AZ while his Democratic challengers took the debate stage in Nevada. 

Breitbart News, a right-leaning media company, wrote that Trump spoke about his triumphs with international trade, fighting against illegal immigration and “keeping America great.”

The article is entitled “Trump in Phoenix: ‘The Great Betrayal Is Over,’ ‘America Is no Longer for Sale’”

HuffPost, a left-leaning media site, recapped the rally in a much different tone in their article entitled, “Trump Brings Normal Fare Of Rambling Boasts And Falsehoods To Arizona Rally.”

The article refutes many of the claims Pres. Trump makes about the economy, the 2016 election and healthcare as lies. 

The two news stories present totally different recollections of what happened inside the Veterans Memorial Coliseum that night. 

“America is absolutely two completely different worlds getting their news from completely different sources that spin a completely different version of what reality actually is,” said Linvill.

“The Russians are just making a bad problem worse,” he said.

Linvill said he doesn’t think America will be further divided by another Russian email hack or Troll account from China, but from our own political campaigns.

“The campaigns work to make these echo chambers worse, especially the Trump campaign. But I mean, everybody does it to some extreme. And certain media outlets … give Americans a particular view of the world that keeps them loyal to a particular ideology.”

“And it’s going to destroy our country.”

Zoe covers Clemson for The Greenville News and Independent Mail. Reach her at znicholson@gannett.com or Twitter @zoenicholson_



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