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-q3/2016-09 folder.
The September 2016 ads were not what I expected. With the election two months away I expected to see a ton of ads about the candidates. I expected all these different groups to be out in full force talking politics. Instead there were fewer ads than August. Of the ads that there were, a lot of them were repeats. The most surprising was, out of 86 ads total, four mentioned Trump, and 76 were from the Black Matters group.
The ads to mention Trump were specifically for the Pennsylvania Miners for Trump rally, using ads p(1)0000070, p(1)0000072, p(1)0000074, and p(1)0000076:
The ad that had the most repeats was a Black Matters ad for the October 22nd National Day of Protest rally in Harlem, in ads p(1)0004672, p(1)0004674, p(1)0004676, p(1)0004678, p(1)0004680, p(1)0004682, p(1)0004684, p(1)0004686, and p(1)0001688:
The ad with the next highest number of repeats was one about evidence being planted on Lamar Smith with p(1)0004712, p(1)0004714, p(1)0004716, p(1)0004718, p(1)0004720, and p(1)0004722:
THIS IS AN OPEN THREAD. Take care, and be well.