German Marshal Fund for the US/Alliance for Securing Democracy
The Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan project backed by the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), has launched a Web tool to keep tabs on Russia’s ongoing efforts to influence public opinion in the United States and abroad. Called Hamilton 68—named for the 68th edition of the Federalist Papers, in which Alexander Hamilton discussed how to prevent foreign meddling and influence in America’s electoral process—the Web dashboard tracks 600 Twitter accounts “linked to Russian influence activities online.” That’s according to a blog post by the Alliance’s senior fellow and director Laura Rosenberger and non-resident fellow J.M. Berger.
Russia’s use of Twitter and other social media in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election (as well as in France, Germany, and Poland) as part of “influence operations” has been well documented. In a New York Times Magazine article in 2015, Adrian Chen exposed a “troll factory” operating on behalf of the interests of the Russian government. The “Internet Research Agency” conducted trial runs well before the election, spreading a hoax about a fictitious accident at a Louisiana chemical plant. And influence operations have continued since the election in the US, promoting stories from both official Russian government media sources and sites like InfoWars.
Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments
