This is part of an ongoing series where I review some of the ads purchased by the Russians. In doing so I hope we can get a better understanding of what they were trying to do, and how to recognize it the next time we’re faced with propaganda.
If you want to follow along, the ads can all be downloaded here. All of today’s ads can be found in the 2016-q1/2016-01 folder.
Even though January 2016 was dominated by Williams and Kalvin, and the Stop All Invaders posts, there were a couple memorable ones from other groups.
There were calls for people to join a protest to be held January 23rd to fight the tearing down of a Robert E. Lee statue in New Orleans in ad p(1)0006298:
I’ve searched, but I haven’t been able to find record of any protests actually happening on that day.
Ad p(1)0004084 targeted Tea Party enthusiasts who weren’t fans of Hilary Clinton. In other words, pretty much every Tea Party enthusiast (yet they still couldn’t get a single click through):
The second file in the folder, p(1)0000017, brought us our first MAGA of the election season:
For reference, Trump had registered the trademark for “Make America Great Again” three and a half years prior.
THIS IS AN OPEN THREAD. Have a pleasant Saturday.