St Petersburg’s Internet Research Agency – AKA “The Troll Factory” –
is in the news since Robert Mueller indicted 13 of its employees, but it
first came to public attention in 2013, when investigative reporters
working for the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta revealed that the
agency was working to manipulate Russian public opinion in favor of
Putin and the Kremlin and against opposition politicians by flooding
Russian online discussions with thousands of “patriotic” posts made
under a welter of pseudonyms.
The story of Novaya Gazeta’s scoop – and the followup revelations in
Russia’s precarious independent press – is quite a tale, where bravery,
smarts, and dogged determination uncovers a plot by a seemingly
impregnable state to shore up its power.
It started with a whistleblower, Natalya Lvova, who posted the story of
her employment at the Troll Factory to the Russian social media platform
VK. Reading the post prompted reporters to pose as job applicants at
the Troll Factory, going undercover to document its operations in
detail.
In addition to revealing the workings of the Factory – how assignments
were given out and evaluated – the reporters also revealed the targets
of the Factory: rubbishing opposition politicians, whipping up patriotic
sentiment around the Moscow G20, attacking America and its media, and
attacking critics of the Kremlin who posted to message boards. As the
Factory grew in stature and importance, it moved into new digs, and
hired staff who could post in English and German, and the Factory
started to target American media with outrage posts about mass
shootings, Obamacare, NSA mass surveillance and police shootings and
violence.
They also stepped up their propaganda wars in Russia, trying to spin the
2015 assassination of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov as a false-flag
operation, using a sock-puppet army to advance the theory that Nemtsov
engineered his own shooting.
These ongoing revelations came thanks to other journalists who followed
the original investigators’ lead, getting jobs in the swelling ranks of
the Troll Factory to document its growth. Other journalists worked with
whistleblowers who left the Troll Factory disenchanted after
soul-deadening work.
Piece by piece, the Troll Factory came into focus. Its ownership was
traced back to Putin crony Yevgeny Prigozhin; this, coupled with the
Factory’s frequent contracts to directly promote the Kremlin and its
policies made it clear that it functioned as a government contractor, or
possibly even an arm of the Russian state.
It also became clear that for all the Factory’s foreign adventures, its
bread and butter is shaping Russian public opinion and neutralizing
opposition voices. The Russian style of misinformation
is “firehoses of falsehood” – as I wrote about Christopher Paul’s work
on Russian propaganda: “having huge numbers of channels at your
disposal: fake and real social media accounts, tactical leaks to
journalists, state media channels like RT, which are able to convey
narrative at higher volume than the counternarrative, which becomes
compelling just by dint of being everywhere (‘quantity does indeed have a
quality all its own’).”
In October 2017, Russian investigators did the data-analysis that outed
the Factory’s most prolific, high-value astroturf accounts, providing
the crucial starting point for efforts that have since identified the
clusters of Russian propaganda bots on social media.
Russia’s independent press operates under constant threat of state
intervention – anything from lawsuits to arrests to disappearances. The
Russian journalists who documented this critical weapon of the Russian
autocratic state are owed a debt of thanks by Russians and westerners
alike, for helping us understand how powerful, corrupt states are
shaping public opinion to preserve their privilege.
Considering that Russian journalists who expose too much often end up murdered by Putin’s security services, it’s important to raise awareness of what they do and support them.
What with draconian laws and website blocking, the pressure on independent media has grown steadily since Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin in 2012. Leading independent news outlets have either been brought under control or throttled out of existence. As TV channels continue to inundate viewers with propaganda, the climate has become increasingly oppressive for those who try to maintain quality journalism or question the new patriotic and neo-conservative. More and more bloggers are receiving prisons sentences for their activity on online social networks. The leading human rights NGOs have been declared “foreign agents.” The oppressive climate at the national level encourages powerful provincial officials far from Moscow to crack down even harder on their media critics.
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