Fingerprints of Russian Disinformation

Samantha Bradshaw spoke to the New York Times for a story touching on the history of social media manipulation.

The Twitter bots that helped spread viral fake news during the election last year have now morphed into cyborgs, or accounts that blend automation with human curation, said Samantha Bradshaw, a researcher on the Computational Propaganda Project at Oxford University. They are more difficult to identify, but still latch onto divisive issues and seek to deepen the wedge.

“The point is not to just tell a lie, but to tell a lie in increments,” Ms. Bradshaw said. “They get a little bit more absurd as you start release more and more stories.”

Read the full story here.