How Russian Trolls Attacked 2017 US Women’s March

The New York Times reports:

More than 4,000 miles away, organizations linked to the Russian government had assigned teams to the Women’s March. At desks in bland offices in St. Petersburg, using models derived from advertising and public relations, copywriters were testing out social media messages critical of the Women’s March movement, adopting the personas of fictional Americans.

They posted as Black women critical of white feminism, conservative women who felt excluded, and men who mocked participants as hairy-legged whiners. But one message performed better with audiences than any other. It singled out an element of the Women’s March that might, at first, have seemed like a detail: Among its four co-chairs was Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian American activist whose hijab marked her as an observant Muslim.

Read the full article. It’s quite the deep dive.

As American feminists came together in 2017 for the Women’s March, Russia’s disinformation machine set about deepening their divides, with troll factories and the military intelligence service putting a sustained effort into discrediting the movement. https://t.co/YQ9F2KL5Km

— The New York Times (@nytimes) September 18, 2022