Russia-linked Twitter accounts sent more than 12,000 tweets about the NFL or the anthem in their alleged efforts to sow discord
When President Donald Trump eviscerated the NFL and its players who protest during the national anthem at a rally in Huntsville, Ala. last year, the debate surrounding the controversial demonstrations roared back to life.
Fueling the outrage: Russian trolls on Twitter.
In the wake of Trump’s Sept. 22, 2017 speech, tweets about the NFL and the national anthem surged from accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency, the Russian and Kremlin-backed company accused of attempting to sow discord in the U.S.
On Sept. 23, 24 accounts almost simultaneously tweeted: “VIDEO: Trump SHREDS NFL Anthem Protesters!”
About eight hours later, the same 24 accounts wrote: “Trump Supporters SACK NFL Commish Roger Goodell For Attacking Trump.”
The same accounts, and others connected to the IRA, continued to blast out tweets on the subject—predominantly criticizing the protests—with thousands of tweets in the days that followed.
In total, over the final months of 2014 through the middle of this year, 491 accounts linked to the IRA sent more than 12,000 tweets about the NFL or the anthem. Researchers from Clemson University provided The Wall Street Journal with the tweets, which come from accounts shut down by Twitter after congressional investigations revealed their connection to the IRA.
This NFL season, the controversy around the player protests has become more muted, with only a handful of players taking a knee, while Trump has not attacked the league in the same way he did a year ago. But mounting evidence indicates just how this issue was used in an attempt to spur uproar. Last Friday, federal prosecutors unsealed a criminal complaint that described the Russian troll efforts to “inflamate passions on a wide variety of topics” ranging from immigration to the NFL national anthem debate.
An analysis of the tweets shows how activity significantly spiked during key moments of the national anthem debate as part of the efforts to use the NFL to create division in the American discourse.
“You want to reach your average American, which is clearly their goal?” said Darren Linvill, an associate professor of communication at Clemson who culled the tweets along with associate professor of economics Patrick Warren. “Then talk about football.”
The data shows that 87% of the partisan tweets about the NFL had a conservative-leaning message, which was frequently critical of the the league and the player protests. “VIRAL! High School Football Player Raises Flag, Puts NFLers to Shame!” two dozen accounts tweeted.
“No wonder NFL players are kneeling to push the false narrative of ‘evil police’ They’re all criminals themselves!” read one tweet from 10_GOP, which had more than 10,000 followers.
The other 13% were left-leaning, with messages such as those supporting Colin Kaepernick, the player who began the demonstrations in 2016 to call attention to social injustices and racial inequality.
In 2015, the accounts sent only 1,241 NFL-focused tweets and the majority of these were not partisan and simply tweets with news links. Then in 2016 with the introduction of the national anthem controversy, which has polarizing views down partisan lines, there was a flood of activity—especially from accounts identified as “right trolls.”
“They clearly are using it as a wedge issue,” Linvill said. “It’s like we handed them a loaded gun.”
In September 2016, the first regular season when Kaepernick and others began the player protests, the accounts sent or retweeted 713 NFL-related tweets, or more than seven times as many as the previous September.
That number grew to 3,310 in September 2017. The biggest part of that increase came in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s speech, during which he assailed the players with crude language and the league for allowing the protests to continue.
“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out. He’s fired,’” Trump said Sept. 22, 2017 in Alabama.
In response, players and entire teams knelt during that weekend’s games in direct response to the president. During that ensuing week, the accounts sent 2,623 NFL-focused tweets, predominantly with messages criticizing the protests as unpatriotic and attacking the league with messages such as #NFLBoycott. Many of these came from a cadre of accounts that sent out identical messages at exactly the same time.
The size of the audiences for these accounts varied, with some reaching only tens of people and others tens of thousands. An account with the handle TEN_GOP, which also tweeted about other issues such as health care, weighed in 24 times about the NFL and peaked with more than 100,000 followers. More recently, there have been tweets from left-leaning trolls in support of the players protesting and Kaepernick, and some of those have been among the IRA’s most retweeted posts on any subject.
Although these accounts have already been shutdown, the Clemson researchers said still-active ones strongly suspected to be Russian trolls have continued to weigh in on divisive sports topics, including the Nike campaign with Kaepernick and the controversial U.S. Open final between Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka.
Source: wsj.com
Source: wsj.com
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