Researchers, journalists, and politicians have expressed worry over the concept of foreign governments using social media to impact elections in democratic countries. However, they haven't been able to reliably assess the scale, prevalence, and impact of these campaigns due to a lack of data. This research focused on the influence foreign accounts had in the 2016 US Presidential Election. After analyses, it appears unlikely that this campaign changed or influenced many individual-level attitudes or voting behaviors. There remains the possibility of other, undetected or secondary effects on the outcome of the election, regardless of whether or not it had a noticeable impact at the individual level.
The researcher is conducting a study to examine the effect of foreign influence campaigns on US citizens during the 2016 US election campaign and is using a longitudinal survey conducted by a public opinion research firm, YouGov, to collect the data. The survey had 1,496 US respondents who gave their Twitter account information during the survey and provided their political attitudes and beliefs at multiple points. The survey instrument captured demographic data such as gender, age, race, and political preferences. The researcher also collected all the posts from their Twitter accounts for eight months prior to the election and then used data released by Twitter to identify the posts from foreign influence campaigns. This information is then used to see what potential "exposures" the US citizens had with foreign influence campaigns, meaning which posts were possibly visible in their timelines. Finally, the researcher acknowledges potential limitation of the data and will use multiple methods, such as examining the number of potentially exposed posts, if a user was exposed to any foreign influence posts, and if they follow any foreign influence accounts, to triangulate results and arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of the foreign influence campaign.
The text is talking about the use of social media by foreign actors to interfere in elections around the world. Data has not been available to investigate the effects of this interference. This paragraph is discussing a research study conducted in the United States in 2016 that looked at the effects of the Russian foreign influence campaign on US voter attitudes and behavior. It found that only 1% of Twitter users accounted for 70% of the exposure to the campaign. It also found that the people who were most exposed were those who strongly identified as Republicans. Additionally, the researchers found that exposure to the Russian influence campaign was overshadowed by content from domestic news sources and politicians. Lastly, they found that there was no meaningful relationship between the exposure to the campaign and changes in voting behavior.
Social media platforms, which started to become popular in the mid-2000s, are often thought to give people a voice and a chance to express their opinions in a democratic way. However, governments became aware of this potential and began to use the platforms to further their own agenda, sometimes influencing democracies of other countries. For example, the Russian government allegedly tried to use social media during the 2016 US election campaign to sway opinions and voting behavior of America. This was widely reported by the news media, government investigators and researchers. Social media companies have also warned of potential foreign intervention in the 2020 US election campaign.
Foreign influence campaigns refer to attempts to influence a population's opinions, attitudes, and behaviors from outside of the country. They often use social media as a platform to spread their messaging. Academics and popular interests have taken notice of these campaigns. However, researchers don't yet have a clear understanding of the effects of this type of campaign on social media, largely due to a lack of data. Previous research has attempted to analyze the relationship between interaction with Russian foreign influence accounts and US political attitudes and behavior, but that research has serious limitations. This article seeks to investigate the effects of Russia’s foreign influence campaign on Twitter during the US presidential election by using longitudinal survey data and linking it to social media data from the 2016 campaign. The aim is to examine the relationship between exposure to accounts from foreign influence and users’ positions on certain issues, polarization, and their voting behavior. It's theoretically possible for these campaigns to have some effect, as they have the potential to reach millions of Americans on Twitter and other platforms, plus investigators agree on the intended goals of the campaign. That being said, it may still be difficult to gauge the effects of this campaign, as traditional election campaigns have rarely shown noticeable changes in voter behavior. Finally, it’s unknown how much exposure to this content was concentrated on a few users or those who were most or least likely to be affected by it.
The researchers are seeking to compare the effects of exposure to posts from the Russian foreign influence campaign and the political attitudes and behavior of ordinary US social media users. Specifically, they will use two types of evidence: First, they will use descriptive evidence to measure the amount and concentration of exposure users had to posts from Russian foreign influence accounts, as well as the partisan profile of those exposed. Second, they will use survey data to examine the relationship between exposure to posts from Russian foreign influence accounts and changes in user’s political attitudes and voting behavior in the 2016 election. After reviewing evidence, the researchers will assess whether exposure to posts from the Russian foreign influence has had an impact on user’s positions on issues, their level of political polarization, and their voting behavior in the election.
Results refer to the results of the research paper. In the context of the paper, the results explain that exposure to Russian foreign influence accounts during the 2016 election campaign was very common. 70% of respondents were exposed to posts from foreign influence campaigns, with a peak of 24,000 exposures occurring on election day. The majority of exposure occurred via retweets from other accounts and around 1% of respondents were responsible for 70% of the exposures to Russian accounts. It is important to note that exposure to posts from foreign influence campaigns was small compared to the amount of content from national news media and politicians which was present during this time.
This text is discussing a study that looked at the characteristics of people who read posts from a Russian foreign influence campaign during the 2016 US election. It explains that researchers examined which political affiliations (e.g. Republicans, Democrats, etc.) were more likely to be exposed to these posts. Results showed that those who identified as 'strong Republicans' were exposed to around nine times more posts than those who identified as Democrats or Independents. Additionally, the study found that the amount of exposure did not depend on other factors like region, social media use, income, etc., but only on party identification. Finally, the study found that exposure to these posts was concentrated among those who identify as highly partisan Republicans, rather than highly partisan Democrats.
The text is discussing how exposure to posts from Russian foreign influence accounts (i.e. accounts associated with the nation of Russia that tried to influence the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election) might have affected people's political attitudes, positions on certain important issues, and perceptions of candidate polarization. The paragraph introduces a research study, where researchers used information about the potential exposure of Twitter users across the United States and combined it with survey data to find the relationship between exposure and political attitudes, positions on issues, and perceptions of candidate polarization. The figure in the text (Fig 4) shows the results of their investigation, where the researchers do not find statistical evidence in support of a relationship between exposure to posts from Russian foreign influence accounts and changes in respondents’ issue positions or perceptions of candidate polarization.
The relationship between exposure to Russian foreign influence accounts and voting behavior is an important question raised by researchers, journalists, and politicians. This research investigates whether exposure to posts from these accounts impacted the changes in a person's voting preferences. The authors compared the voting preferences of respondents prior to the election campaign to their voting preferences immediately prior to election day, and which candidate they voted for. They also measured whether respondents switched from their first-wave preference by either voting for the other candidate; voting for a 3rd-party candidate; or abstaining from voting altogether. After analyzing the data, the estimates revealed that the relationship between the number of posts from Russian foreign influence accounts that users are exposed to and voting for Donald Trump is near zero and not statistically significant. This was the case regardless of the outcome that was measured. The authors also simulated the changes in voting preferences when comparing the predicted change in vote for Trump under observed exposure to no exposure. The results found that the median predicted change in voting preferences was near zero in all outcomes. This suggests that exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign had minimal, if any, effect on vote choice.
