Mitch Chaiet - [email protected]
RTF 368S - MEDIA STUDIES THESIS
The Russians sourced content already proven to be popular among certain demographics, from hashtags and sites already popular among those demographics, edited them to convey their target messages, and spread them through Russian owned parody pages targeting the same demographics said content was sourced from. They provided minimal funding to spur their propagation, in order to propagate those images in a peer to peer fashion (memetically).
Read my interactive undergraduate thesis here
"One of the downsides of spreadability is that bad information may spread just as fast and as widely as good information. In some cases, because misinformation can be constructed to provoke people's fears or gratify their prejudices, it provides better cultural currency than more accurate and nuanced information. This is why we all need to take greater ownership over the information that we circulate. We need to insure its accuracy before we circulate it. We need to weigh its potential negative impact before we insert it into our conversations. We must insure the integrity of our information flow."
- Henry Jenkins for Engineering Inflammatory Content
Helpful Links
- The Russian Ad Explorer
- Exposing Russia’s Effort to Sow Discord Online: The Internet Research Agency and Advertisements - intelligence.house.gov
- Meme Hacking: Unearthing Russian Misinforation Efforts - UT Austin - Technology and Information Policy Institute Blog
Data Sources: