Reverse-engineering political protest: the Russian Internet Research Agency in the Heart of Texas

ABSTRACT

In the aftermath of the 2016 US presidential election, the public slowly began to grapple with the extent of Russian disinformation campaigns by the Internet Research Agency (IRA), elements of which were carried out on Facebook. Campaigns targeted people in the United States in many ways, including by publishing event pages on Facebook that were at times piggybacking on existing events, stoking fear, anger and other emotions already on the rise in an increasingly tribal political climate. In the summer before the election, two particular Facebook pages – ‘Heart of Texas’ and the ‘United Muslims of America,’ published events advertising protests in front of the Islamic Da’wah Center, a mosque and religious center in downtown Houston. Our study reverse-engineers the IRA-inspired ‘Heart of Texas’ protests on 21 May 2016, using qualitative in-depth interviews with 14 individuals connected to these events – including counterprotest participants and local organizers, journalists who covered the protest, as well as representatives of local organizations. Results shed light on the role that news media played in protest coverage, the dynamics at the protest, issues around vetting information and the serendipity around how protests emerge and get organized on and off social media. This research documents and critically assesses the on-the-ground transactions such propaganda foments and offers insights into the role of social media in local protests.

KEYWORDS:

• Internet Research Agency
• disinformation
• Facebook
• protest
• Texas

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to interview participants for sharing their experiences. This study is a project of the Technology and Information Policy Institute (TIPI) at Moody College of Communication, at the University of Texas at Austin. We acknowledge and appreciate the support of Good Systems, a research grand challenge at the University of Texas at Austin.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 While we find Becker’s (1995) operational definition useful, we want to point out that, in line with other researchers, we believe that terms such as white, grey, and black propaganda can ‘reinscribe racial connotations’ (Daniels, 2009, p. 662) and should therefore be used sparingly, if at all.

2 While it would have alleviated this study, we were unable to interview white nationalist protesters, mainly because there were few to begin with; reports indicate around a dozen or so participated (as opposed to 80–100 counterprotesters by participants’ estimates), and they were not associated with coherent organizations or contact points, although we did speak with journalists who had interacted with some of them.

3 We use ‘they’ to refer to all informants in this article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Good Systems, a research grand challenge at the University of Texas at Austin.

Notes on contributors

Martin J. Riedl

Martin J. Riedl (MA, Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media; MA, Humboldt University of Berlin) is a doctoral candidate in the School of Journalism and Media, as well as a research associate for the Center for Media Engagement and the Technology and Information Policy Institute, all at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include content moderation, media sociology, internet governance, and social media [email: [email protected]].

Sharon Strover

Sharon Strover (PhD, Stanford University) is the Philip G. Warner Regents professor of Communication at the Moody College of Communication and directs the Technology and Information Policy Institute. Her research interests include digital inclusion efforts; broadband policy, infrastructure and deployment; artificial intelligence and media systems; and platform politics [email: [email protected]].

Tiancheng Cao

Tiancheng Cao (MA, Leiden University; MA, University of Amsterdam) is a doctoral student at the School of Journalism and Media and a graduate research assistant at the Technology and Information Policy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. With a background in art history and new media, his research interests lie at the intersection of museum studies and media studies, especially focusing on the impact of digital and information technology on the museum community [email: [email protected]].

Jaewon R. Choi

Jaewon Royce Choi (MA, Korea University) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include the digital divide, emerging technology governance, the Internet of Things and embedded info-sphere, ICT industry politics, as well as connected healthcare [email: [email protected]].

Brad Limov

Brad Limov (MA, Nagoya University) is a doctoral student in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin. His research lies at the intersection of offline (cinema) events and online media platforms, with particular attention paid to the spaces and opportunities they do or do not create for communities, activism, and social change [email: [email protected]].

Mackenzie Schnell

Mackenzie Schnell (BBA, University of Wisconsin–Madison) is a master’s/MBA student in the Moody College of Communication and at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests center around organizational communication, collective action and social change [email: [email protected]].