The meme was the preferred method of misinformation for Russian agents trying to sway the 2016 presidential election, and they made use of an online arsenal on the social media pages of one of the country’s most influential conservative youth organizations.
According to a report prepared by researchers from New Knowledge and at the behest of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Russians regularly shared content created by Turning Point USA, the youth organization boasting hundreds of chapters across college campuses and headed by Charlie Kirk.
Whether or not it was effective, the goal was simple: to manipulate voter opinion on social media. Operating as the Internet Research Agency out of St. Petersburg, Russian agents waged “a propaganda war against American citizens, manipulating social media narrative to influence American culture and politics.”
According to researchers, the trolls were pretty good at spreading their message. The scope of their troll farm was unprecedented, reaching 126 million users on Facebook with their posts, 20 million on Instagram with their photos, and 1.4 million on Twitter with their tweets.
Using memes, those amusing and ubiquitous captioned photos on social media, the Russians tried to suppress voter turnout in black communities and raise fears of widespread voter fraud. Most of the time, agents simply stole content and passed it off as their own. According to New Knowledge researchers, there were some exceptions.
Turning Point USA campus groups host conservative speakers and engage in political activism like the more austere Young America’s Foundation. But like its current leader, the 25-year-old Charlie Kirk, TPUSA is more combative and much more steeped in Internet youth culture.
Scroll over to its Facebook to see hundreds of Republican arguments boiled down to silly photos and simple text. Hillary Clinton belongs in prison. Open borders are idiotic. Socialism sucks. Conservative kids share these memes to “own the libs.” According to researchers, Russians used them as an arsenal of misinformation.
Stealing was standard operating procedure for the Internet Research Agency’s troll farm. Researchers say Russian agents would rebrand the content as their own before sharing it. “Turning Point USA was one exception,” the analysts note, “the IRA shared brand-marked Turning Point memes.”
This came as a surprise to TPUSA and may be a bit of an embarrassment to the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who works closely with Kirk and counts him as a friend. In a statement to the Washington Examiner though, a spokesman condemned the Russians for sharing its content.
“Our content reaches billions of eyeballs every year, and it’s shared by top influencers across all social media platforms,” the spokesman said. “We can’t control who shares our content, and we condemn adversarial foreign actors that attempt to divide our country.”
