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The 2015–2017 Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA)'s coordinated information operation is one of the earliest and most studied of the social media age. A set of 38 city-specific inauthentic "newsfeeds" made up a large, underanalyzed part of its English-language output. We label 1,000 tweets from the IRA newsfeeds and a matched set of real news sources from those same cities with up to five labels indicating the tweet represents a world in unrest and, if so, of what sort. We train a natural language classifier to extend these labels to 268 k IRA tweets and 1.13 million control tweets. Compared to the controls, tweets from the IRA were 34% more likely to represent unrest, especially crime and identity danger, and this difference jumped to about twice as likely in the months immediately before the election. Agenda setting by media is well-known and well-studied, but this weaponization by a coordinated information operation is novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This exploratory study examined Twitter content addressing the controversial social advocacy movement, American Descendants of Slavery. We collected 1.7 million tweets using the hashtag #ADOS. A sample of these were qualitatively placed into categories: galvanizing support for ADOS, divisive support for ADOS, attack ADOS, or unrelated. Tweets were also categorized as nativist or not nativist. Findings showed that more than half of tweets using #ADOS had a divisive character and nearly ten percent were overtly nativist. No difference was found in user engagement with tweets related to either divisiveness or nativist content, suggesting the character of these tweets is not devised simply for greater amplification of their message. Implications and future directions for research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We document methods employed by Russia's Internet Research Agency to influence the political agenda of the United States from September 9, 2009 to June 21, 2018. We qualitatively and quantitatively analyze Twitter accounts with known IRA affiliation to better understand the form and function of Russian efforts. We identified five handle categories: Right Troll, Left Troll, News Feed, Hashtag Gamer, and Fearmonger. Within each type, accounts were used consistently, but the behavior across types was different, both in terms of "normal" daily behavior and in how they responded to external events. In this sense, the Internet Research Agency's agenda-building effort was "industrial" – mass produced from a system of interchangeable parts, where each class of part fulfilled a specialized function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the dangers posed within the college campus communities to which social media may contribute including cyberbullying, racial hostility, and stalking behaviors as well as dangers posed by the evolving threat of coordinated disinformation. The needed pedagogical changes to help students engage with the world through social media are explored. The essential role of standard digital media literacy interventions in addressing the influence of social media is also tackled.

Abstract: This study explored how colleges and universities are employing Twitter, a popular micro-blogging tool. Using Kent and Taylor''s principles of dialogic communication, a content analysis was performed on individual tweets (n =1130) from 113 colleges and universities. Tweets were coded for whether or not they met each principle of dialogical communication and why. It was found that institutions are not employing Twitter in a dialogic way and they are, instead, employing it primarily as an institutional news feed to a general audience. The implications of this finding are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]