So let’s talk about misinformation.
Recently, the Yahoo-owned website Tumblr was the latest in string of websites that admitted to unwittingly providing a platform for Russian sockpuppets to spread misinformation and propaganda aimed at influencing the 2016 American election. Unlike Facebook, Tumblr has left the reblog chains up, choosing instead to name the blogs responsible and inform users if they spread any posts by those blogs, leaving it up to them to delete or not.
Watching the ensuing discussion play out on Tumblr has been fascinating. While there are a few people who refused to believe they were duped and have even started a theory that the whole thing is an excuse to go after progressive bloggers, there has been some interesting discussions on the reblog chains of the original sock-puppet posts. Many of the sockpuppets tried to blend in with the general leftist atmosphere on Tumblr (with exceptions, of course), with some even pretending to be back Americans and members of Black Lives Matter. The political discourse they spread was along similar lines as real American activists but often with a sense of hopelessness at the institutions. As well, while it is harmful to assume that all anti-Hilary sentiment, especially from black people, on the internet was the result of Russian propaganda this was the other major theme of the political posts spread by the agents. Again, these agents were feeding off of conversations that already existed and mainly seemed to feed the fire by adding propaganda and enabling extreme reactions.
While Russia is not strictly a fascist state by definition, this whole episode has given us a glimpse at how an authoritarian government can embed misinformation into one of our most central means of communication.
Feldman, Brian. (2018, March 26). “Tumblr Is, Almost by Accident, Our Best Glimpse of How Russian Trolls Work”. Selectall. http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/03/tumblr-is-our-best-glimpse-of-how-russian-trolls-work.html
(The full list of blogs can be found at this link: https://tumblr.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002280214-Public-record-of-usernames-linked-to-state-sponsored-disinformation-campaigns)
(Here are some extra sources of specific posts being analyzed: 1, 2)
Bet You Couldn't See This Coming 
Super interesting! I definitely did not expect Tumblr – what i believed to be the most left wing tree hugging hipster mecca- to be effected by the Russian scandal, but here we are! I think this is particularly interesting for a number of reasons. Unlike facebook, tumblr users are much more anonymous, and therefore the flow of idea can seem much more natural appearing on your timeline that a status from a conservative family member. I also think that since Tumblr is so known to be far left, having this propaganda flowing across is could make it much more believable and effective. Tumblr is also much more low-key than Facebook and therefore dogged this scandal quite a bit. I definitely agree that this is an excellent example of how an authoritarian government can create misinformation into our means of communication.
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You mention that many of these Russian “sock puppets” would post onto existing threads discussing progressive causes such a the Black Lives Matter Movement. I couldn’t help but wonder why there is such a rush to blame these supposed Russian agents for inflaming tensions when they are allegedly just drawing light to existing issues. I feel as if it has become an easy deflection for US politicians to simply blame social unrest on “the Russians” rather than actually addressin the difficult issues leading to this unrest.
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I really wish I had gone into some of the really interesting analysis of the actual Russian sockpuppet posts! While there is a worthwhile discussion to be had about blaming Russian influence into an election that Americans must take credit for, in this context there is specific evidence of how these accounts worked to undermine the discussions taking place. It seems a bit disingenuous to insinuate that the unveiling of these Russian sockpuppets has been done to target progressive bloggers, especially when it has not been a wide crackdown on this sphere and the sockpuppets were spread all over the political spectrum. As well, these accounts rarely contributed to the actual discussion and tended to steal posts to blend in before transitioning to more outright pro-Trump content. In case it’s of interest to anyone (and I’m going to go back and edit these links in), here are two cases of analysis into how these accounts worked, done by Tumblr users.
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