Image Gallery

Social Media Sockpuppets

Facebook Ads Purchased by a Russian Troll Farm

Image Gallery

People are very visually-oriented: they often react much more strongly and much more quickly to an image than a paragraph. Virtually all the ads created by the IRA in this dataset employ some visual element, whether it’s a meme, an image with text, or a video. Since there are so many visuals that go with this dataset—there is a column for URLs to png files for every single ad that was made available to the researchers—I thought it would be apt to have an image gallery. Some highlights from the image gallery below include examples of some of the earliest ads in this campaign, examples of ads that contained errors that might have clued people to the fact that these ads weren’t being made by Americans, as well as examples of some of the ads that had the most impressions.

The Ad with the Most Impressions and Clicks
Identifier: 2,751
Date Created: 10/19/2016
Cost: $1,769
Impressions: 1,334,544
Clicks: 73,063

One of the early Ads
Identifier: 438
Date Created: 06/23/2015
Cost: $13
Impressions: 815
Clicks: 39

The Most Expensive Ad
Notice how many more impressions and clicks this got than the previous ad.
Identifier: 450
Date Created: 06/23/2015
Cost: $5,307
Impressions: 529,205
Clicks: 72,043

An election day message trying to get Black Facebook users to abstain from voting.
Identifier: 3,026
Date Created: 11/08/2016
Cost: $7
Impressions: 8,498
Clicks: 584

Another, one trying to get Black Facebook users not to vote for Hillary.
I do not think there are any analogues urging white Christians not to vote for Trump...
Identifier: 1,183
Date Created: 11/03/2016
Cost: $8
Impressions: 18,888
Clicks: 1,635

I honestly expected more of these types of ads.
Take note of the missing article before "Texas warm welcome." This is a subtle indicator in some of these posts that the command of English is not perfect.
Identifier: 708
Date Created: 08/04/2016
Cost: $8
Impressions: 3,361
Clicks: 808

Perhaps the most cost-effective of all the IRA ads.
(Notice that it's a visual medium and it's content with postive affect.)
Identifier: 1,033
Date Created: 02/14/2017
Cost: $24
Impressions: 501,552
Clicks: 49,197

One of the seemingly unrelated, mundane posts
But it sure has a lot of impressions for $8.
Identifier: 955
Date Created: 04/05/2017
Cost: $8
Impressions: 489,186
Clicks: 26,179

I think that we can see that the narrative on both sides of the racial/cultural divide is that in order to survive this time of tribulation, the community of needs to turn inwards, away from the other side. This message is more explicit in some ads, but even the ones that seem innocuous and uplifting reinforce pride in a certain culture, whether that be black culture or evangelical white culture. There is no space for compromise or coalition in these ads nor are there ads that specifically promulgate multiculturalism.

I believe that this sampling illustrates the way that many of the ads attempted to divide and cloister people into separate echo chambers and to foster distrust of the other side, and on top of that, there is a recurring attempt to erode confidence and faith in institutions (media and government), such as the ads that urged black voters to abstain from voting in the election.

ALGORITHMIC INTENSIFICATION