Beyond Election Interference - The Ambitions of the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA)

Welcome to the fifth episode of Big Data, Big Issues. Today we will be talking about the Russian Internet Research Agency(IRA).

The Internet Research Agency (IRA; Russian: Агентство интернет-исследований, also known as Glavset and known in Russian Internet slang as the Trolls from Olgino) is a Russian company engaged in online influence operations on behalf of Russian business and political interests. It is linked to Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin and based in Saint Petersburg.

The January 2017 report issued by the United States Intelligence Community – Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections – described the Agency as a troll farm writing: "The likely financier of the so-called Internet Research Agency of professional trolls located in Saint Petersburg is a close Putin ally with ties to Russian intelligence," noted that "they previously were devoted to supporting Russian actions in Ukraine—[and] started to advocate for President-elect Trump as early as December 2015."

The agency has employed fake accounts registered on major social networking sites, discussion boards, online newspaper sites, and video hosting services to promote the Kremlin's interests in domestic and foreign policy including Ukraine and the Middle East as well as attempting to influence the 2016 United States presidential election. More than 1,000 employees reportedly worked in a single building of the agency in 2015.

The extent to which a Russian agency has tried to influence public opinion using social media became better known after a June 2014 BuzzFeed article greatly expanded on government documents published by hackers earlier that year. The Internet Research Agency gained more attention by June 2015, when one of its offices was reported as having data from fake accounts used for biased Internet trolling. Subsequently, there were news reports of individuals receiving monetary compensation for performing these tasks.

On 16 February 2018, a United States grand jury indicted 13 Russian nationals and 3 Russian entities, including the Internet Research Agency, on charges of violating criminal laws with the intent to interfere "with U.S. elections and political processes", according to the Justice Department.

Here is the content I am talking about in this video:

► 0:26 - The Tactics & Tropes of the Internet Research agency

► 1:34 - The Data Set of the Russian Internet Research Agency

There's over 10.4 million tweets, 1100 youtube videos, 116k Instagram posts and 61500 Facebook posts related to the US Elections

► 2:11 - Internet Research Agency (IRA) Background and Operations

The company was founded in mid-2013. In 2013, Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported that Internet Research Agency Ltd's office was in Olgino, a historic district of Saint Petersburg. It had about 1000 employees, ukrainians, russians and americans with a budget of $25 million.

The terms "Trolls from Olgino" and "Olgino's trolls" (Russian: "Тролли из Ольгино", "Ольгинские тролли") have become general terms denoting trolls who spread pro-Russian propaganda, not only necessarily those based at the office in Olgino.

In 2016 the IRA conducted a set of attacks to disrupt the election process in the USA using cyberattacks on DNC, attempts to hack several online voting systems and conducted a massive social media influence operation.

► 5:20 - Goals of the Internet Research Agency (IRA) in 2016

The goals of the Internet Research Agency (IRA) in 2016 were to create political division targetting both left and right parties. Means to achieve that are explained in the video.

► 12:28 - Ongoing Efforts

After the 2016 elections scandal, everyone targetted by the IRA are making efforts to stop this kind of activities from happening again in the future. The social media companies voluntarily took down accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency (IRA), researchers discovered more information while reviewing the data sets. The truth is that it is hard to know what is going on currently

► 15:36 - Combating Cybercrime

The intellinge community and the tech companies are working together to build up a defense system to combat cybercrime

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"The Tactics and Tropes of the Internet Research Agency"

http://www.reneediresta.com/ira-report-4e8d0ff684.pdf

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#bigdata #IRA #bigissues #electioninterference #russia #hacking #cybercrime #trolls