Analyzing Digital Traces of Political Manipulation: The 2016 Russian Interference Twitter Campaign

July 2018 No Comments

Analyzing Digital Traces of Political Manipulation: The 2016 Russian Interference Twitter Campaign

Speaker: Lerman, K. (University of Southern California [USC] Information Sciences Institute [ISI])

Date: 24 July 2018

Speaker Session Preview

SMA hosted a speaker session presented by Dr. Kristina Lerman (University of Southern California [USC] Information Sciences Institute [ISI]) as a part of its SMA DHS Speaker Series. Dr. Lerman spoke about her research, which examines the role of political ideology and social bots on Twitter during the 2016 US election and distinguishes which users may be susceptible to manipulation. She and her team collected millions of tweets between 15 September and 9 November 2016 and identified which troll accounts generated the most tweets and which media outlets liberals and conservatives retweeted. Dr. Lerman identified the topics that were most frequently discussed among liberal and conservative users, distinct characteristics of the most prolific spreaders of various tweets, and where the majority of tweets about the election originated from. To conclude the session, Dr. Lerman provided insights as to what variables are most important to consider when successfully predicting spreaders and what lessons were learned as a result of this research.