Politics
Inside the Russian
effort to target Sanders supporters — and help elect Trump
A pair of Clemson University researchers, at the request of
The Washington Post, examined English-language tweets identified as coming from
Russia, many of which were designed to influence the election. It is impossible
to say how many were targeted at Sanders supporters because many don’t include
his name. Some 9,000 of the Russian tweets used the word “Bernie,”
and those were “liked” 59,281 times and retweeted 61,804 times.
But
that was only one element of the Russian effort to target Sanders supporters,
the researchers said. Many thousands of other tweets, with no direct reference
to Sanders, were also designed to appeal to his backers, urging them to do
anything but vote for Clinton in the general election.
“I
think there is no question that Sanders was central to their strategy. He was
clearly used as a mechanism to decrease voter turnout for Hillary Clinton,”
said one of the Clemson researchers, Darren Linvill, an associate
professor of communications. The tweets examined in the new analysis “give us a
much clearer understanding of the tactics they were using. It was certainly a
higher volume than people thought.”