50 Ben Popken, “Russian Trolls Duped Global Media and Nearly 40 Celebrities,” NBC News, November 3, 2017, https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/trump-other-politicians-celebs-shared-boosted-russian-troll-tweets-n817036.
51 Digital Forensic Research lab investigation into the troll account @TEN_GOP: Ben Nimmo, “How a Russian Troll Fooled America,” Medium, November 14, 2017, https://medium.com/dfrlab/how-a-russian-troll-fooled-america-80452a4806d1.
52 DiResta et al., “The Tactics and Tropes of the Internet Research Agency.”
53 Ibid.
54 Punctuation is presented as in the original content; it is not mistyped.
55 Chris Joyner, “Watchdog: Russian Trolls Meddled at Stone Mountain Protests,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 15, 2018, https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/watchdog-russian-trolls-meddled-stone-mountain-protests/SQMhxrKgxVbsQ2ISIbyukN.
56 Todd J. Gillman, “Russian Trolls Orchestrated 2016 Clash at Houston Islamic Center, New Senate Intel Report Recalls,” Dallas Morning News, October 8, 2019, https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2019/10/08/russian-trolls-orchestrated-2016-clash-houston-islamic-center-senate-intel-report-says.
57 Renée DiResta, Shelby Grossman, and Alexandra Siegel, “In-House vs. Outsourced Trolls: How Digital Mercenaries Shape State Influence Strategies,” Political Communication 39, no. 2 (2022): 222–253, https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2021.1994065.
58 “Heart of Texas” Facebook page post from February 2, 2016. It received 822 likes, 242 shares, and 509 comments.
59 DiResta and Goldstein, “Full-Spectrum Propaganda in the Social Media Era”; S. Bradshaw and P. Howard, “Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation,” Working Paper no. 2017.12, Computational Propaganda Research Project, 2017, https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:cef7e8d9-27bf-4ea5-9fd6-855209b3e1f6.
60 Catherine Bennette, “The Pro-Russian Propaganda Hiding in Your TikTok Feed,” The Observers, January 10, 2021, https://observers.france24.com/en/tv-shows/truth-or-fake/20211001-the-pro-russian-propaganda-hiding-in-your-tiktok-feed.
61 Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument,” American Political Science Review 111, no. 3 (2017): 484–501, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055417000144.
62 Ben Nimmo, “How MH17 Gave Birth to the Modern Russian Spin Machine,” Foreign Policy, September 29, 2016, https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/09/29/how-mh17-gave-birth-to-the-modern-russian-spin-machine-putin-ukraine.
63 Joel Gunter and Olga Robinson, “Sergei Skripal and the Russian Disinformation Game,” BBC, September 9, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45454142; Joby Warrick and Anton Troianovski, “How a Powerful Russian Propaganda Machine Chips Away at Western Notions of Truth,” Washington Post, December 10, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/national-security/russian-propaganda-skripal-salisbury.
64 Shelby Grossman et al., “Blame It on Iran, Qatar, and Turkey: An Analysis of a Twitter and Facebook Operation Linked to Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia,” Stanford Internet Observatory, April 2, 2020, https://fsi-live.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/20200402_blame_it_on_iran_qatar_and_turkey_v2_0.pdf.
65 Hadeel Al Sayegh, “Saudi’s Kingdom Holding Company to Maintain Twitter Stake,” Reuters, October 28, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/saudis-kingdom-holding-company-maintain-twitter-stake-2022-10-28.
66 Katie Benner et al., “Saudis’ Image Makers: A Troll Army and a Twitter Insider,” New York Times, October 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/20/us/politics/saudi-image-campaign-twitter.html; Kevin Collier, “Former Twitter Employee Sentenced to More Than Three Years in Prison for Spying for Saudi Arabia,” NBC News, December 14, 2022, https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/former-twitter-employee-sentenced-three-years-prison-spying-saudi-arab-rcna61384.
67 For example, the Russian newspaper RIA FAN, owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, for quite some time was publishing articles that quoted fake people—troll accounts offering “man-on-the-street” commentary—run by other entities tied to Prigozhin. This embedding of inauthentic accounts became something of a lead-generation tool for the discovery of new networks of troll accounts. Renée DiResta et al., “In Bed with Embeds: How a Network Tied to IRA Operations Created Fake ‘Man on the Street’ Content Embedded in News Articles,” Stanford Internet Observatory Cyber Policy Center, December 2, 2021, https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/publication/bed-embeds.
68 This is the title of Pomerantzev’s 2014 memoir about his time in Russia: Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia (New York: Public Affairs, 2014).
