By Rich
Lowry
Tuesday,
January 10, 2023
Not all
conspiracy theories are created equal.
The same
people who pride themselves on rigorously insisting on the facts — ideally,
explained in the dulcet tones of an NPR anchor — are happy to embrace
conspiracy theories supportive of their own worldview.
This is
why the idea that Russian disinformation on social media influenced or even
decided the 2016 election has gained such purchase, even though a new study
finds, unsurprisingly, no evidence for it.
The
overwhelming focus on the Russian influence operation in the wake of 2016 was
classic conspiratorial thinking — an unusual or unwelcome event, namely Trump’s
shocking victory, was attributed to the machinations of a small, shadowy group
of malefactors.
This
fevered notion fueled Democratic 2016 election denialism; catalyzed a federal
investigation into Trump that was senseless and disruptive; created a cottage
industry of supposed disinformation experts; pushed social-media companies into
exercising rank political censorship in the name of fact-based content
moderation; led to the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story;
and distorted the work of the FBI, which made itself an adjunct of the
progressive crusade against such supposedly pervasive and incredibly
consequential disinformation.
The
effects of all of this are still with us today. The panic over disinformation
is the backdrop to many of the “Twitter files” releases, which will be followed
up with hearings by House Republicans.
It
always seemed unlikely that a challenge beyond the grasp of American politicos
with endless resources and extensive knowledge of our political system —
namely, swaying an election based on some random, not-very-good social-media
posts — would be easily within reach of clueless Russians wielding a bunch of
bots.
The new
report published by Nature Communications (affiliated with the famous
journal Nature) is the product of a yearslong research project led
by New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics. For technical
reasons, the study focuses on Twitter, although surely its findings are more
generally applicable.
It found
that even though the scale of the Russian efforts sounds vast (an estimated 32
million Twitter users exposed to Russia-sponsored posts — egads!), its reach
and measurable effect were negligible.
According
to the report, which relied on a detailed survey of a subset of Twitter users,
1 percent of people on Twitter accounted for 70 percent of exposure to Russian
tweets, and 10 percent for 98 percent of exposure.
In other
words, this was not a widespread phenomenon. Indeed, the median exposure to
Russian accounts the last month of the election was zero because
overall exposure was so tiny.
As one
might expect, the Russian accounts were “overshadowed — by at least an order of
magnitude — by content from ordinary domestic political news media and U.S.
political candidates.”
Was the
Russian disinformation carefully targeted for political effect? No. It turns
out that the Internet Research Agency, the outfit in charge of the bots, didn’t
know how to target American swing voters (maybe they are better at this when
trying to influence by-elections in Vladivostok).
The
Russian accounts were disproportionately seen by strong Republicans. These
weren’t people sitting on the fence, who then saw some crude anti-Hillary meme
on social media and thought, “That clinches it — now I can’t vote for the
Democrat I’ve disdained literally for decades.”
The
study found, naturally, “The relationship between the number of posts from
Russian foreign influence accounts that users are exposed to and voting for
Donald Trump is near zero.” Nor did Russian posts influence attitudes toward
the issues or drive increased polarization.
It turns
out that random drivel produced by foreigners and thrown into the enormous,
all-consuming maw of American social media doesn’t have much effect.
If the
report’s findings were more politically convenient, they would be spread far
and wide by traditional media outlets urging everyone to accept its conclusions
as “science.”
In the
end, it turns out, the biggest success of the Russian operation was driving a
segment of American political opinion completely mad.
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