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Before diving into this dataset, I familiarized myself with the context behind the ads. I’m sure many Americans have at least heard about Russian influence campaigns on social media, but probably don’t know about them in much depth. Below, I’ll talk a bit about the different actors in our current milieu.
In February 2018, Robert Mueller indicted several Russian individuals and organizations. One of these organizations was the Internet Research Agency (IRA). The IRA was a Kremlin-backed Russian “troll” farm that purchased Facebook advertisements that, according to both Mueller and the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, sought to promote Donald Trump as a presidential candidate while criticizing Clinton. In Mueller’s words, the IRA:
[H]ad a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Defendants [the IRA] posted derogatory information about a number of candidates, and by early to mid-2016, Defendants’ operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump (“Trump Campaign”) and disparaging Hillary Clinton. Defendants made various expenditures to carry out those activities, including buying political advertisements on social media in the names of U.S. persons and entities. Defendants also staged political rallies inside the United States, and while posing as U.S. grassroots entities and U.S. persons, and without revealing their Russian identities and ORGANIZATION affiliation, solicited and compensated real U.S. persons to promote or disparage candidates. Some Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities.
After the public became aware of these ads, Facebook went to Congress to testify about Facebook’s role in alleged election interference. In April 2018, Mark Zuckerberg participated in a Congressional hearing on the basis of Russian disinformation campaigns taking place on Facebook. Later, in September 2018, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also appeared before Congress to testify about election interference and media manipulation occuring on their sites.
This dataset comes from the Social Media Advertisements dataset given by Facebook to the House Intelligence Committee. The Committee then released it to the public. You can find the dataset here.
Young Mie Kim, a professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found these ads before many others did. During a six week study of political ads on Facebook that took place between September 28, 2016 and November 8, 2016, Kim discovered mounting evidence of targeted Facebook ads purchased by entities that were not registered with the Federal Election Committee, or FEC. She identified six suspicious groups, one of which turned out to be a Russian organization.
These ads are not limited to Facebook. Twitter and Google also testified to the House Intelligence Committee that Kremlin-backed groups had purchased political ads on their platforms (Kim).
Kim asks:
Just as a stealth bomber shoots at a target without being detected by radar, do digital media platforms function as stealth media—a system that enables the deliberate operations of political campaigns with undisclosed sponsors/sources, furtive messaging of divisive issues, and imperceptible targeting? What types of groups engage in such campaigns? How do such campaigns target the public?
We should not discount online propaganda simply because it is on Facebook. Our online lives are increasingly linked with our offline selves. Facebook, once only one website on the internet, is now something much larger. Facebook is involved in congressional hearings; Facebook is criticized for its labor practices; Facebook has become the de facto way to communicate with, and even sometimes meet, friends and family. We shouldn’t discount Facebook’s power simply because it exists online and is relatively new. Our online selves are just as “real” as our offline ones; the consequences of online propaganda, discrimination, and tensions are present in the “real world,” too.
<iframe seamless frameborder="0" src="https://public.tableau.com/views/Timeofads/Sheet1?:embed=y&:display_count=yes&publish=yes&:showVizHome=no" width="800" height="600"></iframe>Most of the ads were posted in 2016, and intensified in the weeks leading up to the election. Surprisingly, the largest uptick in ads occurs in 2017, during the month of April. In particular, they occurred the same week as Neil Gorsuch was sworn into the Supreme Court, and during a period where the Trump administration was under increased scrutiny. That there was an uptick of ads after the election indicates that the ads were not only intended to put Donald Trump in power, but to sustain tension, and even support for Trump, after the election and into the early days of the administration.