Russian propaganda and local news sources
2018-07-19 23:31:10.426984+02 by Dan Lyke 0 comments
NPR: Russian Influence Campaign Sought To Exploit Americans' Trust In Local News
Another twist: These accounts apparently never spread misinformation. In fact, they posted real local news, serving as sleeper accounts building trust and readership for some future, unforeseen effort.
"They set them up for a reason. And if at any given moment, they wanted to operationalize this network of what seemed to be local American news handles, they can significantly influence the narrative on a breaking news story," Schafer told NPR. "But now instead of just showing up online and flooding it with news sites, they have these accounts with two years of credible history."
Of course if you wanted to tell me that the Russians are behind the editorial and letters to the editor pages on actual physical local newspapers in order to undermine the United States, well, that's a theory that also matches the available evidence...