The Russian digital agency Mueller indicted ran like 'a propaganda startup'
Along with 13 Russian nationals, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team targeted three Russian organizations in the indictment announced Friday. Among them was a group called the Internet Research Agency (IRA), which The Wall Street Journal reports operated like "a propaganda startup," complete "with finance and graphics departments, performance targets, and a sophisticated social-media strategy designed to gain maximum attention."
The IRA's troll factory operated with the precision of, well, a factory, the Journal story says. "Operational goals were subject to internal audits," and messaging was tightly policed. The monthly budget was about $1.25 million, money spent refining online targeting to increase engagement with social media users who believed they were talking to fellow Americans.
But the action wasn't all online. The IRA used its digital reach to "organize flash-mobs in Florida," to "pay a U.S. resident to dress up like Hillary Clinton in a prison uniform at a West Palm Beach rally," and to "promote several pro-Trump rallies." Read the Journal's full report here.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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