Twitter accounts tied to Russian influence operations propagated shooting-related messages in the immediate aftermath of Wednesday’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, intervening in the ongoing gun control debate amid renewed concerns involving Moscow’s meddling in U.S. domestic matters.
An analysis of tweets attributed to 600 accounts linked to Russian influence operations revealed that hashtags and topics including Parkland, guncontrolnow, Florida, guncontrol and Nikolas Cruz — the name of the suspected shooter —dominated their Twitter posts in the hours following Wednesday’s rampage, Wired first reported.
The Twitter accounts are monitored by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan project supported by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, as part of the “Hamilton 68” endeavor it launched last August to track online Russian propaganda and disinformation efforts.
Among the 600 monitored Twitter accounts are automated “bots,” as well as accounts linked to state-owned media outlets and self-professed pro-Russian Twitter users, according to the alliance. Its precise membership is undisclosed.
As of Thursday morning, the most popular trending topics being tweeted among the automated bot accounts monitored by Hamilton 68 were shooter, NRA, shooting, Nikolas, Florida and teacher, Wired reported. Overall the top link shared by the tracked accounts early Thursday, bots and otherwise, was a 2014 article that critically examined a statistic cited by Everytown for Gun Safety, a pro-gun control group, the report said.
Bret Schafer, a research analyst with the alliance, said Russian influence operations typically piggyback on topics trending abroad. He said the Twitter accounts have been particularly vocal in the aftermath of recent mass shootings, however, weighing in similarly last year after massacres in Las Vegas and Texas, Wired reported.
“Because of the politicized nature of them, they are perfect fodder to take an extreme position and start spreading memes that have a very distinct political position on gun control,” Mr. Schafer said of the shootings. “That allows them to then push content that is more directly related to the Kremlin’s geopolitical agenda,” he said.
“I don’t think the Kremlin cares one way or another whether we enact stricter gun control laws,” Mr. Schafer added. “It’s just being used as bait, basically.”
The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence accused Russia last January of using state-funded media, third-party intermediaries and paid social media trolls hired by the so-called Internet Research Agency to meddle in the 2016 White House Race as part of an influence campaign authorized by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We expect Russia to continue using propaganda, social media, false-flag personas, sympathetic spokespeople and other means of influence to try to exacerbate social and political fissures in the United States,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats testified Wednesday during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on foreign threats.
More recently, the Department of Justice on Friday indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies, including the Internet Research Agency and its employees, on charges related to the 2016 race.
“The defendants allegedly conducted what they called information warfare against the United States, with the stated goal of spreading distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in announcing the charges Friday. “They established social media pages and groups to communicate with unwitting Americans. They also purchased political advertisements on social media networks,” he said.
Russia has repeatedly denied meddling in the 2016 race.
Twitter declined to comment. Previously the company said it detected and deleted 3,814 likely Internet Research Agency accounts, as well as more than 50,000 presumably automated accounts that shared election-related activity out of Russia during the 2016 race.
“We are committed to ensuring that Twitter is safe and secure for all users and serves to advance healthy civic discussion and engagement,” Twitter said last month. “Our work on these issues will never be done, and we will continue in our efforts to protect Twitter against bad actors and networks of malicious automation and manipulation.”
Mr. Cruz, 19, opened fire around and inside his former school Wednesday afternoon in southern Florida, killing 17 people and injuring more than a dozen others, according to law enforcement. The incident, as with previous school shootings, quickly rekindled discussions on- and offline with respect to gun control laws and Americans’ access to firearms.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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