Thread by @SecureDemocracy

1/ THREAD: What doesn’t appear on #Hamilton68 is often as interesting as what does. Today, near silence on the Manafort verdict. Instead, the focus is largely on using the Mollie Tibbetts murder to spread divisive content on #immigration. This follows a familiar pattern.

2/ On Dec 1, 2017, accounts monitored on #Hamilton68 pounced on the not guilty verdict in the murder trial of Kate Steinle, who was shot and killed by an undocumented immigrant in San Francisco.

3/ The dashboard’s findings on December 1, 2017 mirror data collected by Clemson Univ. researchers, who recently published more than 3 million tweets from IRA troll accounts.
github.com/fivethirtyeigh…

4/ Among those IRA accounts, well over 20% of English-language tweets on 12/1/17 focused on the Kate Steinle case, and it remained a point of focus for the rest of the week.

5/ The most active IRA account (that we know of) was @COVFEFENATIONUS, a right-leaning troll who tweeted several hundred inflammatory messages about the case (samples below), while also tweeting at news outlets and the president.

6/ .@COVFEFENATIONUS was not alone. Fellow right trolls @Amconvoice and @Barbarafortrump posted almost exclusively about the Steinle murder on 12/1.

7/ But like almost every social issue, there were also Russian trolls targeting the left. Samples below from two left-leaning IRA troll accounts, @fighttoresist and @jemishaaazzz.

8/ What's the goal? Use a tragic moment to amplify an issue (immigration) that divides Americans. Today, there's also the added goal of distracting us from a topic that is more problematic in terms of Russian interests. THREAD ENDS.