Russian Propaganda Has Succeeded in Persuading Credulous Americans That It Poses a Grave Threat to Democracy

 There is little evidence that Russians pretending to be Americans have had any discernible effect on public opinion or election outcomes.

• Contrary to the overheated warnings about foreign election "interference" we have been hearing since 2016, even genuinely phony social media accounts pose a threat less worrisome than the panic they have provoked
• A Nature Communications study published last month casts further doubt on that claim
• The researchers used survey data to investigate the impact of "foreign influence accounts" on Twitter during the 2016 election campaign
• They identified 786,634 posts from such accounts between April and November 2016, the vast majority of which were associated with Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA).
• Exposure to the Russian influence campaign was eclipsed by content from domestic news media and politicians

A Facebook ad traced to the IRA depicted an arm-wrestling match between Satan and Jesus

• In a 2018 New Yorker article explaining "How Russia Helped Swing the Election for Trump," Jane Mayer cited that absurd piece of agitprop to show how adept Russian operatives were at manipulating American opinion.
• Although the volume of Russian-sponsored messages was "much smaller" in 2022 than it was in 2016, it was more skillfully targeted, showing "how vulnerable the American political system remains to foreign manipulation."

https://reason.com/2023/02/01/russian-propaganda-has-succeeded-in-persuading-credulous-americans-that-it-poses-a-grave-threat-to-democracy/