Russian 'ecosystem of junk news' targeted the military, Oxford study found

WASHINGTON – Russia has exploited social media networks to target current and former U.S. military personnel with propaganda, conspiracy theories and other misinformation, achieving "significant and persistent interactions" on Twitter during one month last spring, British researchers found.

The Oxford University study, which traced the reach of three websites known to have shown ads and posts linked to the Russian government, adds a new dimension to revelations of a Kremlin cyber campaign aimed at undermining Americans' trust in democracy during last year's U.S. elections and helping Donald Trump win the presidency.

"We've found an entire ecosystem of junk news about national security issues that is deliberately crafted for U.S. veterans and active military personnel," said Philip Howard, a professor of internet studies who led the research. "It's a complex blend of content with a Russian view of the world — wild rumors and conspiracies."

The study found that Russia's communication inroads with the military community on Twitter "are not presently very deep," and that it has had more success gaining ­influence through Twitter than Facebook.

The researchers sought to map how social media amplified the effect of the websites that sprang up over the last four years:

• Veteranstoday.com, which in late 2013 began publishing content from New Eastern Outlook, a geopolitical journal of the government-chartered Russian Academy of Sciences.

• Veteransnewsnow.com, a sister site that started posting information from the Moscow think tank Strategic Culture Foundation during the same time.

Politico first reported last June about Russia's recent military targeting, describing how Veterans Today mixed advice for veterans on how to find jobs and pay medical bills with headlines such as "Ukraine's Ku Klux Klan — NATO's New Ally." It said that while the United States confronted Syrian leader Bashar Assad, a Russian ally, over chemical weapons attacks on Syrian children last spring, the site carried a story headlined: "Proof: Turkey Did 2013 Sarin Attack and Did This One Too."

Mike Carpenter, a former senior Pentagon official who specialized in Russian issues, said the three websites all "appear to be Russian fronts, given the high degree of Russian content."

"[T] hey bill themselves as providing 'alternative points of view,' similar to Russian propaganda channels like RT and Sputnik," he said.

Facebook disclosed last month that a company tied to a Russian "troll farm," whose operatives spread misinformation, set up fake accounts that bought 3,000 election-related ads. It said 75 percent of the ads, which the company said may have popped up in the Facebook newsfeeds of as many as 10 million people, focused on such divisive issues as immigration, gun rights and gay rights.

The Kremlin's global "active measures" campaigns have showered disinformation on democracies around the world since the Soviet era. But newer social media tools have enabled the explosive growth of networks dedicated to distributing false and misleading news.

"On Twitter there are significant and persistent interactions between current and former military personnel and a broad network of Russia-focused accounts, conspiracy theory-focused accounts and European right-wing accounts," the researchers concluded.

The interactions are an indication that the messages are being noticed and may have some effect.

In the networks reaching vets and active-duty troops, the researchers wrote, both liberals and conservatives were drawn to posts on the websites that laid out supposed conspiracies, including some pointed at the U.S. government.

The researchers noted that they couldn't track all of the relevant content, in part because the limited data publicly available from Twitter and Facebook does not include fake accounts that the two companies detected and closed.

Carpenter said that under President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin's propaganda machine "has become very good at targeting specific demographics and subgroups within American society, with tailored content in order to sow discord and undermine trust in government."