Social media accounts tied to a group of Russian trolls are amplifying claims of election fraud, according to researchers at the Election Integrity Partnership, a coalition of misinformation experts.
“Assets linked to the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) have been promoting unverified or false claims of massive ballot tampering, often with lurid, hyper-partisan headlines,” according to the report the coalition published Tuesday. The Russian agency was linked by federal officials to a wide-ranging disinformation campaign during the 2016 election.
The false information being amplified was first shared by U.S. citizens, and Russian-linked trolls were sharing it across a number of fringe social media sites popular in right-wing circles, like Gab and Parler, the report said. The claims being made, including that ballots were being thrown away or shredded, have been widely debunked.
Researchers at the Election Integrity Partnership tied I.R.A.-linked social media accounts to two websites, USA Really and The Newsroom for American and European Based Citizens. USA Really was launched by the Federal News Agency, a Russian outlet funded by the Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin, who also founded the I.R.A. The Newsroom for American and European Based Citizens, a Hungary-based outlet, was exposed in early October as a Russian asset. Both entities were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in December 2018 under the heading of “attempted election interference.”
The Russian activity “shows an interest in narratives which could be used to delegitimize the outcome of the election,” said Ben Nimmo, one of the misinformation researchers participating in the Election Integrity Partnership.
November 04, 2020 at 06:30AM
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Russian internet trolls are amplifying election fraud claims, researchers say. - The New York Times
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