Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Russia trolls 'spreading vaccination misinformation' to create discord
Social media bots and Russian trolls have been spreading disinformation about vaccines on Twitter to create social discord and distribute malware, US researchers say.
Troll accounts that had attempted to influence the US election had also been tweeting about vaccines, a study says.
Many posted both pro- and anti-vaccination messages to create "false equivalency", the study found.
It examined thousands of tweets sent between 2014 and 2017.
Vaccination was being used by trolls and sophisticated bots as a "wedge issue", said Mark Dredze from Johns Hopkins University.
<snip>
While a majority of Americans believed vaccines were safe and effective, looking at Twitter gave a different impression and suggested that there was a lot of debate about the issue, the disinformation study, which was published in the American Journal of Public Health, said.
"A significant portion of the online discourse about vaccines may be generated by malicious actors with a range of hidden agendas," said David Broniatowski from George Washington University.
The researchers reviewed more than 250 tweets about vaccination from accounts linked to the St Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA). In February the agency was named in a US indictment over alleged election meddling.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45294192
Troll accounts that had attempted to influence the US election had also been tweeting about vaccines, a study says.
Many posted both pro- and anti-vaccination messages to create "false equivalency", the study found.
It examined thousands of tweets sent between 2014 and 2017.
Vaccination was being used by trolls and sophisticated bots as a "wedge issue", said Mark Dredze from Johns Hopkins University.
<snip>
While a majority of Americans believed vaccines were safe and effective, looking at Twitter gave a different impression and suggested that there was a lot of debate about the issue, the disinformation study, which was published in the American Journal of Public Health, said.
"A significant portion of the online discourse about vaccines may be generated by malicious actors with a range of hidden agendas," said David Broniatowski from George Washington University.
The researchers reviewed more than 250 tweets about vaccination from accounts linked to the St Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA). In February the agency was named in a US indictment over alleged election meddling.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45294192
I feel like we as a society need to collectively ban Russia from the internet, they offer nothing but bad ideas. Also, has there been any good organization with the initials IRA?
8 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
And that's when they just start making shit up.
