PROPAGANDA THROUGH MIMICKING: THE 2016 IRA PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN ON FACEBOOK IN THE U.S.

Abstract

The thesis research analyzes the mimicking in the Russian propaganda campaign on Facebook against the US in 2016. I identify a gap in the literature: the scholars have noted that Russia has mimicked American activists by creating groups on Facebook that wrote about political and social issues but they have not studied the effects and effectiveness of the mimicking. Consequently, the focus of the research is to find the effects of mimicking of the Russian propaganda campaign on Facebook. To analyze mimicking, I used the Facebook dataset shared by the US House of Representatives on the Russian propaganda campaign in 2016 against the US. Through the content and regression analyses, I found the following effects: the propaganda messages with more sophisticated mimicking of the rhetoric of their targeted audience on Facebook have attracted more attention and led to higher engagement rates. The implication of the finding is that such propaganda campaigns may have the capacity to amplify the polarization of the society by providing polarizing content on social media more reach, while its reach might be limited by the mimicking itself. Whether amplification of polarization occurred in actuality and the extent of it requires further research. Other implications of mimicking in foreign political propaganda have also been discussed.