In Bed with Embeds: How a Network Tied to IRA Operations Created Fake “Man on the Street” Content Embedded in News Articles
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- On December 2, 2021 Twitter announced that they had suspended a network of 50 accounts linked to previously removed activity from the Internet Research Agency. The network focused on Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe, and included a mix of accounts representing real people and fake accounts (at least one with an AI-generated profile photo). Twitter assesses that the operation originated in North Africa.1 The network was most notable for the high portion of accounts that had their tweets embedded in news articles from the Yevgeny Prigozhin-linked publication RIA FAN (“Federal News Agency”), in some cases the Russian state media outlet Sputnik, and a wider ecosystem of websites around the world. Social media embedding is a practice of incorporating public commentary into news articles that is widely leveraged by many credible publications worldwide, and leveraged to provide on-the-ground or “man-on-the-street” perspectives on pivotal issues. However, in the case of RIA FAN, what was embedded was commentary by way of tweets linked to inauthentic accounts from influence networks. This tactic is a novel addition to deceptive long-form propaganda practices that include byline fabrication and hashtag laundering. While few of the tweets had high engagement on Twitter, the embedding offered the opportunity for a different mode of influence: the commentary could be pushed out to entirely different audiences to illustrate supposed points of view from real people about important, and often, divisive political and policy issues. One account had a tweet embedded in France 24, a French state-owned media outlet. Other accounts frequently chatted on Twitter with Western reporters and analysts, providing what they claimed was accurate on-the-ground information from conflict zones. One individual linked to the network created a news website that has been cited by many reputable outlets, and is linked to as a resource for CAR news by an American university library.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date modified | December 5, 2022 |
| Publication date | January 5, 2022; December 2, 2021 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Grossman, Shelby | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | DiResta, Renée | |
| Author | Ramali, Khadeja | |
| Author | Sharma, Rajeev | |
| Author | Bradshaw, Samantha | |
| Author | Nershi, Karen |
Subjects
| Subject | Twitter, takedown |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Report |
Bibliographic information
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- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Grossman, S., DiResta, R., Ramali, K., Sharma, R., Bradshaw, S., and Nershi, K. (2021). In Bed with Embeds: How a Network Tied to IRA Operations Created Fake “Man on the Street” Content Embedded in News Articles. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/xw115vb5420
Collection
Stanford Internet Observatory, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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- internetobservatory@stanford.edu
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