На фронтах информвойны

[tijd]

Retweet/reply network for the deleted troll tweet dataset. There are direct interactions with 36818 accounts shown-real number is likely far larger as the dataset is partial and certain interactions are missing. pic.twitter.com/IHXmjzJu2O
- Conspirador Norteño (@conspirator0) February 14, 2018

Твиттер удалил в общей сложности 3814 аккаунтов российских троллей, зарегистрированных питерской фабрикой троллей и принимавших участие в спецоперации по вмешательству в американские выборы https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/2016-election-update.html

Вместе с аккаунтами удалены все их твиты, что мешает исследователям анализировать технику пропаганды. NBC попытались эти твиты восстановить и собрать в базу данных:

NBC News is publishing its database of more than 200,000 tweets that Twitter has tied to "malicious activity" from Russia-linked accounts during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
These accounts, working in concert as part of large networks, pushed hundreds of thousands of inflammatory tweets, from fictitious tales of Democrats practicing witchcraft to hardline posts from users masquerading as Black Lives Matter activists. Investigators have traced the accounts to a Kremlin-linked propaganda outfit founded in 2013 known as the Internet Research Association (IRA). The organization has been assessed by the U.S. Intelligence Community to be part of a Russian state-run effort to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential race.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/now-available-more-200-000-deleted-russian-troll-tweets-n844731



Предварительный анализ показывает, что наиболее влиятельными были две группы троллей. Одна группа (вроде знаменитых TEN_GOP и Jenn_Abrams) прикидывалась республиканцами, пыталась инициировать ненависть к либералам и агитировала за Трампа и против Клинтон. Другая группа (вроде BlackMattersUS и BleepThePolice) прикидывалась афроамериканцами, пыталась инициировать расовые трения и ненависть к полиции, а также агитировала против Клинтон в пользу Берни Сандерса и Джил Стайн.

Rather than pushing Donald Trump’s candidacy, however, the site highlighted and praised the campaigns of Sanders and Jill Stein. One post called Sanders “a man of true morals and values,” while another said Ajamu Baraka, Stein’s vice presidential candidate, was a “Black hero” who “has fought for Black freedom.” The post also described Baraka - who has claimed that the 2014 downing of flight MH17 over Ukraine was a “false flag” operation against Russia - as “an internationally recognized … geopolitical analyst.”
https://thinkprogress.org/black-matters-us-site-90625b18f262/

О похожих операциях в сети Tumblr пишет Buzzfeed.

Russian trolls posed as black activists on Tumblr and generated hundreds of thousands of interactions for content that ranged from calling Hillary Clinton a “monster” to supporting Bernie Sanders and decrying racial injustice and police violence in the US, according to new findings from researcher Jonathan Albright and BuzzFeed News.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/russian-trolls-ran-wild-on-tumblr-and-the-company-refuses

Пониженная явка на выборах среди черных американцев стала одним из главных факторов, которые привели Трампа к победе. Психологические операции российских бойцов информационной войны внесли в это свою лепту, пока не до конца ясно, насколько большую.



Подполковник военно-воздушных сил Jarred Prier опубликовал занимательную статью Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare по материалам его магистерской диссертации:
http://www.airuniversity.af.mil/Portals/10/SSQ/documents/Volume-11_Issue-4/Prier.pdf

В статье подробно разбираются два эпизода информационных войн с использованием социальных сетей: один со стороны ИГИЛ, другой со стороны России. В ноябре 2015 российский тролль Fanfan1911, изображая чернокожего американца, во время протестов в Миссури распускал тупой ложный слух о том, что полиция марширует вместе с Ку-клукс-кланом и избивает людей.

One user, display name “Jermaine” (@Fanfan1911), warned residents, “The cops are marching with the KKK! They beat up my little brother! Watch out!” Jermaine’s tweet included a picture of a black child with a severely bruised face; it was retweeted hundreds of times. Additionally, Jermaine and a handful of other users continued tweeting and retweeting images and stories of KKK and neo-Nazis in Columbia, chastising the media for not covering the racists creating havoc on campus.

Ложные слухи вызвали небольшую панику.

The University of Missouri student body president tweeted a warning to stay off the streets and lock doors because “KKK members were confirmed on campus.” National news networks broke their coverage to get a local feed from camera crews roaming Columbia and the campus looking for signs of violence. As journalists continued to search for signs of Klan members, anchors read tweets describing shootings, stabbings, and cross burnings. In the end, the stories were all false.



В начале 2016 тот же аккаунт сменил имя на FanFan, переключился на немецкий и стал распространять анти-иммигрантскую пропаганду на немецкую аудиторию. Весной 2016 он снова заговорил по-английски, а через некоторое время сменил имя, пол и расовую принадлежность, превравшись в "Deplorable Lucy", горячую поклонницу Трампа.

Once again, FanFan’s name changed-this time to “Deplorable Lucy”-and the profile picture became a white, middle-aged female with a Trump logo at the bottom of the picture. The FanFan follower count went from just over 1,000 to 11,000 within a few days. His original network from the Mizzou and European campaigns changed as well: tracing his follower trail again led to the same groups of people in the same network, and they were all now defined by the “Deplorable” brand. In short, they were now completely in unison with a vast network of other Russian trolls, actual American citizens, and bot accounts from both countries on Twitter.

Это был далеко не самый влиятельный аккаунт, поэтому и не боялся оставлять следы, но из его эволюции можно сделать выводы о методах информационных спецопераций.

From 2015 to 2016, Russian trolling modus operandi took a logical path from small stories designed to create panic and sow seeds of doubt to a social media machine that IS could only imagine. In warfare strategy, narrative manipulation through social media cyber operations is the current embodiment of taking the fight directly to the people. The 2016 election proved that using social media to influence political outcomes, as opposed to violence or Cold War-like posturing, is a highly effective strategy in modern information warfare-a strategy that will likely continue as technology continues to develop and adapt to the evergrowing social media landscape as more actors gain the ability to take command of the trend.