A report prepared for senates about Russia’s interference in the 2016 United States presidential election concluded that the operation has used every major social media platform in order to deliver images, video and words to voters’ interest to get their support and help elect President Donald Trump. Two reports have been reported.
The US Senate studied both the reports to better understand the involvement of Russia during the vote. Through private research, first report was made and was expected to be presented on Monday, by the senate intelligence committee.
The first report said that “active” Russian interference operation does existed on all major social media platforms. It revealed several same conclusions which was presented by special counsel Robert Mueller, house intelligence committees, the US intelligence community and the senate – which much of its posting of social media was focused on race and were primarily intended to help Trump and hurt democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Researchers has analyzed that more than 116,000 Instagram posts, 61,000 Facebook posts, 10 million tweets and 1,000 videos were posted by Russian government-linked Internet Research Agency (IRA) – a report released by Mueller.
The report stated: “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.” It further added, 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”.
In the wake of reports released, senators have called for an action from Congress and Silicon Valley, to describe the extended actions of Russia as “more comprehensive, calculating and widespread” and termed the act as a “wake-up call”.
The reports has been compiled by a cybersecurity frim New Knowledge with the all data presented by senate community from technologies like Facebook, Google and Twitter.
Spokesperson of Twitter said that the report has “made significant strides since 2016 to counter manipulation of our service”. The researchers stated: “With at least some of the Russian government’s goals achieved in the face of little diplomatic or other pushback, it appears likely that the United States will continue to face Russian interference for the foreseeable future.”
One of the major reports studied was the breadth of Russian interference that has appeared on Instagram that was owned by Facebook. The study also said that as all attentions were focused on Twitter and Facebook in 2017, Russian shifted their activity to Instagram. At least 187 million engagement with the users on Instagram and about 77 million of engagement on Facebook.
Researchers stated: “Instagram was a significant front in the IRA’s influence operation, something that Facebook executives appear to have avoided mentioning in congressional testimony,” adding, “Our assessment is that Instagram is likely to be a key battleground.”
A representative for Facebook has declined to comment on reports and said the company does “not seen” any findings. The statement said: “We continue to fully cooperate with officials investigating the IRA’s activity on Facebook and Instagram around the 2016 election.”
The second reports was presented by the researchers at the University of Oxford and also called the computational propaganda research project. It also noted several peaks in the IRA organic activity and advertising – shares, posts and comments by the users – that were corresponded with several important dates in accordance with the US calendar, international events and crises.
Senate intelligence committee chairman Richard Burr, said, “These reports are proof positive that one of the most important things we can do is increase information sharing between the social media companies who can identify disinformation campaigns and the third-party experts who can analyze them.”
Draft reports said: “What is clear is that all of the messaging clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party – and specifically Donald Trump.”
Mark Warner of Virginia, a leading Democrat on the panel, said it’s “time go get serious” over the issue. Warner said, “That is going to require some much-needed and long overdue guardrails when it comes to social media,” adding, “I hope these reports will spur legislative action in the Congress and provide additional clarity to the American public about Russia’s assault on our democracy.”