The next speaker in this IAMCR 2019 session is Asta Zelenkauskaite, whose interest is in micro- as well as macro-perspectives on influence in online contexts. This understands influence as non-linear and context-dependent, mediated by available media and information infrastructures and their affordances.
Asta’s study is focussing on the deviant spaces where influence is deliberately orchestrated and shaped by interested users. The study investigates the far-right social media platform Gab, and how its users make sense of the Russian trolling news frame. The platform is designed to cater to specific audiences and discourses, but is open to anyone to contribute and edit, with decentralised social controls; this builds on automation and anonymity, but any analysis of activities on the platform must go beyond an observation of these two factors.
How do Gab users address the Russian trolling story, then? The story emerged in news portals in Lithuania, and expanded gradually to mainstream U.S. news portals as well as specific hyperpartisan sites, including Gab.
Here, the majority of comments sought to dismiss Russian trolling, often by whataboutism techniques that tried to shift the discussion to unrelated alternative topics which were presented as far more important than Russian trolls; by denying the evidence for the existence of the trolls; by claiming the trolling to be a false flag operation by liberal, left-wing, or deep state organisations; by blaming news media for pushing the story; by positioning right-wing groups as the real victims; or by sarcastic posts. Any acknowledgment of actual Russian successes in trolling the U.S. was also seen as positioning the U.S. as a weak ‘pussy state’.
This shows the uses of Gab as a space to orchestrate coordinated responses to current political debates, using standard tools of contemporary online propaganda .
