Russian Facebook Operations and the 2016 Election

• In Event: Covert Action and Regime Change

Abstract

Abstract: During the US presidential election of 2016, Russia conducted a coordinated social media messaging campaign meant to disrupt US political discourse and societal cohesion. One of the primary methods used in this campaign were Russian generated social media advertisements designed to look like authentic US-based political interest groups and individuals. The advertisements touched on a wide range of sensitive social and political issues including race, immigration, police brutality, and the second amendment, and were likely meant to accentuate existing social cleavages and deepen political polarization within the American electorate.

This research project analyzes the Russian Facebook advertisement campaign in order to better understand Moscow’s strategy and approach to election interference. The paper will address three questions. First, what did the Russian Facebook campaign look like? Specifically, we will identify the key themes and issues pushed to American audiences and look at how individuals and groups were targeted through tailored advertisement messaging. Second, how did the campaign operate and how adaptive was it? Here the emphasis will be on measuring Russian reaction and responsiveness to specific election-related events in the United States. The purpose is to evaluate the complexity of the Russian advertisement creation and distribution process to better understand how the Russian Internet Research Agency modified their techniques based on changing local conditions. Third, how effective was the campaign in reaching its intended audiences? The goal is to assess the size and scope of the campaign as a whole, and evaluate the degree to which it succeeded as a (dis)information delivery device. This section will be narrowly scoped, and as a result, will not address the larger, and perhaps unanswerable question, of whether the Facebook campaign changed American voting behavior and the overall election outcome.

The data for the project comes from the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s recently released collection of Russian-origin Facebook advertisements running from June 2015 through May 2017. The sample consists of over 3,000 individual ads shared by Facebook with the committee in late 2017 and made public in May 2018. Each advertisement includes an image of the material as was presented on Facebook along with an accompanying set of metadata on the ad cost, ad clicks, age groups targeted, etc. The paper will combine content analysis of each advertisement with longitudinal analysis meant to uncover trends in advertisement content, costs, and audiences over the course of the 2016 election cycle. While a small portion of the ads have been redacted, the overall collection presents an adequate sample from which to draw conclusions on Russian social media messaging tactics.

The paper will contribute to the broader study of foreign influence on democratic election processes and the use of social media in fomenting political and social unrest in open societies.

Authors

• Colin Roach, NIU

• Adam Jungdahl, National Intelligence University