Propaganda Watch: Russian Social Media Ads–11/2/19

Russian President Vladimir Putin superimposed into a Russian Flag. Image by Lenny Ghoul.

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-q2/2016-04 folder.

The ads took particular notice of injustices against African Americans. P(1)0002011 spoke about a woman who pulled her son from a charter school after he was punished for hitting a bully:

Jaden received a three day suspension for pushing away a bully who punched him repeatedly and gave Jaden a consussion. The bully got a five day suspension.

The case from P(1)0002015 is a little different:

In the midst of ads aimed at dividing us, they spread a story of the community coming together to help a family. Whether they realized it or not, they were negating their own overarching message.

And then you have p(1)0003508. I think most people would agree that crime shouldn’t be hidden. It would solve a lot of problems if it wasn’t:

The thing I found most interesting of all three of these ads were the targets. It wasn’t just “people who like X page” but their friends as well. So even if you never showed or liked one of these pages, but someone on your friends list did, these posts would show up on your feed. This is how they could get the message to spread–by growing their audience, whether people wanted to be that audience or not.

THIS IS AN OPEN THREAD. Take care, and have a great Saturday.

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