From targeting black voters to encouraging Texan secession, Russians crafted memes on social media to push the 2016 election in President Trump's favor, a Senate report released Monday shows. But at first glance, it's not completely clear how some posts relate to the 2016 race.
In one of two reports shared Monday, cybersecurity firm New Knowledge documents how a Russian troll farm called the Internet Research Agency "leveraged social media to wage a propaganda war" during and beyond the election cycle. Posts got the most engagement on Instagram — like this June 11, 2017 post, which was IRA's most successful on the platform with 254,179 likes and 6,734 comments.
This kind of post wasn't explicitly about politics, but instead aimed to build an audience and viewers' trust, the report notes. The same was true of IRA's most-liked Instagram before the election, which it posted twice on the account @army_of_jesus_ in March and June of 2016.
Top-performing memes like this one were often reposted or recycled across different pages, seeing as IRA ran 133 Instagram accounts, 16 websites, and dozens of Facebook pages, the report says. Across all those accounts, just 18 percent of Instagram posts and seven percent of Facebook posts mentioned candidates Trump or Hillary Clinton by name.
You can read the whole disinformation report here, or get a quicker rundown here. Kathryn Krawczyk
There's a brand new way Democrats can make the debate stage next month.
The Democratic National Committee announced requirements to qualify for February's primary debate Friday, saying the donor threshold will remain steady, with candidates needing at least 225,000 unique donors. Candidates will also, as before, need to hit at least five percent in four qualifying national polls or seven percent in two polls of New Hampshire, Nevada, or South Carolina voters. But there's now a third path that candidates can take to replace the poll requirement: If they win just one delegate in Iowa, they're in.
This could open a path for candidates such as entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who hit the donor requirement but didn't have enough qualifying polls to make January's debate. The Iowa caucuses are Feb. 3, and the next debate is Feb. 7 in New Hampshire. Kathryn Krawczyk
After traveling the world hunting for treasure in his personal life, Nicolas Cage can soon resume doing so in the movies, too.
A third National Treasure film is in the works at Disney with Bad Boys for Life's Chris Bremner writing a screenplay, The Hollywood Reporter wrote Friday.
No further details were provided in the report, which only briefly mentioned National Treasure while focusing on the status of a fourth Bad Boys film, which is also apparently happening. But this news comes more than a decade after National Treasure: Book of Secrets hit theaters, easily outgrossing the original but for some reason not being followed by five to eight more installments centered around Benjamin Franklin Gates' increasingly wacky adventures.
A third National Treasure has been discussed going back years, though, to the point that this movie could just be about the mythical quest for its own screenplay. Director Jon Turteltaub in 2018 suggested the odds it would come together weren't great, telling /Film, "I don't think Disney wants to make it," though he suggested it could happen as a streaming-exclusive film.
Now that it's apparently moving forward, though, what treasure hunt might be at the center of this installment? Could it just completely ignore the first two films and turn into a documentary about Nicolas Cage the actor's totally real attempt to locate the Holy Grail, which he revealed last year and dubbed his "grail quest"? Probably not, but Disney can have that idea for free. Brendan Morrow
The Harvey Weinstein trial officially has its jury.
Jury selection in the trial of the disgraced film producer ended Friday with seven men and five women set to serve, Variety reports. Three alternates, one man and two women, were also selected.
Lead prosecutor Joan Illuzzi during jury selection accused the defense and trying to "systematically exclude" young white women, The Hollywood Reporter writes. "They have eliminated every single white woman from this prospective jury panel," Illuzzi said, Variety reports.
The defense, in turn, accused the prosecution of trying to exclude men from the jury, but the Reporter writes Judge James Burke didn't accept either argument. The defense reportedly said it didn't seek to exclude young women but that, as The Associated Press writes, they "didn't want jurors who were too young to understand the way men and women interacted in the early 1990s."
The defense objected to one particular juror, a woman who wrote a forthcoming novel whose plot has to do with "predatory older men," Deadline reports. The judge ultimately said the woman could serve on the jury and denied the defense's subsequent request for a mistrial.
Weinstein is facing rape and sexual assault charges, which he has pleaded not guilty to. Opening arguments in the trial are set to begin on Jan. 22. Brendan Morrow
An era in the film industry has officially come to an end.
Disney is rebranding the 20th Century Fox film studio it purchased in its acquisition of Fox assets last year, Variety reports. Going forward, 20th Century Fox will instead be known as 20th Century Studios, and Disney will also rebrand Fox Searchlight Pictures as just Searchlight Pictures.
Audiences will start seeing these changes fairly soon, as The Call of the Wild will reportedly be released next month under the new 20th Century Studios branding, although the opening logo complete with that iconic fanfare will be kept unchanged other than the altered name being swapped in.
This decision, The New York Times notes, will mean that "consumers do not mistakenly think the movie studio has anything to do Rupert Murdoch's polarizing Fox News media empire." Indeed, an insider told Variety, "I think the Fox name means Murdoch, and that is toxic." Fox News was among the assets Disney didn't acquire in its $71 billion 21st Century Fox purchase, which gave it the rights to properties like Avatar, X-Men, and The Simpsons ahead of the launch of its streaming service, Disney+.
Still yet to be decided, according to Variety's report, is whether Disney will similarly rebrand 20th Century Fox Television and Fox 21 Television Studios, which produce shows like The Orville, This Is Us, and Pose. On TV, then, the Fox name lives on inside Disney — for now. Brendan Morrow
Some major changes are apparently coming to Springfield.
Hank Azaria has revealed he'll longer voice Apu on The Simpsons, telling /Film, "All we know there is I won't be doing the voice anymore, unless there's someway to transition it or something."
The Simpsons faced renewed criticism over Apu since the release of the 2017 documentary The Problem with Apu, in which comedian Hari Kondabolu and others discuss the character who Kondabolu has described as "a white guy doing an impression of a white guy making fun of my father."
The documentary sparked a conversation about whether The Simpsons should write out the character some view as an offensive Indian stereotype, though others suggested keeping Apu but recasting Azaria with an Indian voice actor. Azaria, who also voices other characters on the show like Moe and Chief Wiggum, appeared to allude to that option Friday by referencing a possible "transition." But while Azaria said it's "up to them and they haven't sorted it out yet," he made clear that "I won't do the voice anymore," also saying, "We all made the decision together."
The Simpsons previously addressed the criticism over Apu in a meta 2018 episode, in which Lisa, looking directly at the camera, says, "Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect." She then looks at a picture of Apu and asks, "What can you do?" Marge and Lisa, again addressing the audience, promise this will be "dealt with at a later date," "if at all." That later date is evidently coming up.
Azaria previously expressed his willingness to step down from the role of Apu, saying on The Late Show, "the idea that anybody who is young or old, past or present, was bullied or teased based on the character of Apu, it just really makes me sad." No official announcement about the future of the character has been made. Brendan Morrow