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Daily Russian Tweets in the 2016 Presidential Election

Throughout the 2016 US Presidential Election, Tweets were published by trolls associated with the Internet Research Agency (IRA) - a Russian entity. The IRA is believed to have been tasked with interfering in the 2016 US Presidential Election with their primary goal being to disseminate news and opinions in a way that motivated the spread of disinformation in a critical time in US politics.

In 2016, the two primary candidates up for the US Presidency were Donald J. Trump - representing the Republican party - and Hillary R. Clinton - representing the Democratic Party. It is understood that the IRA and Russians in general were driven to sway the election towards Trump because of his political theory and lack of experience in politics. This, paired with the Russian’s motivation to spark discourse in US politics and the US in general are some of the main reasons the Russian’s interfered with the US Presidential Election.

The following plot shows the number of Tweets by Russian trolls in the 2016 US Presidential Election from June 16th, 2015, when Donald Trump officially announced his candidacy in the Election, to January 20th, 2018, a year after Trump first assumed the office of the Presidency. This time frame, from my analysis of the data, best tells the story of Russian trolls and their role in this election.

When Hillary Clinton’s private emails were leaked by a probable Russian source in early October of 2016, we see an uptick in the number of Tweets by Russian trolls. This is likely to have been a result of these Tweets as the trolls attempted to spread disinformation and show Hillary Clinton in a negative light. The timeliness of these email leaks is one of the primary events that is believed to have led in the shocking loss of the election of Hillary Clinton. These emails led to a general sense of distrust in the Democratic candidate and likely winner of the election. Subsequently, we see a large spike in late 2016 which is associated with Election Day on November 8th, 2016 where Donald Trump confirmed his place in history as the winner of the 2016 Presidential Election and incoming 45th President of the United States.

Another interesting time frame that we can see in this plot is the cluster of high-frequency tweet dates in mid-August of 2017. This cluster correlates with the “Unite the Right” rallies colloquially known as the Charlottesville riots. This is where a group of white supremacists and neo-Nazis gathered to oppose the removal of Confederate monuments in Charlottesville, but also to show a unified front of “White Power” against their counter-protestors primarily in the Black Lives Matter movement.

Overall, I found that the frequency of Tweets was associated with impactful events in the election of Trump along with events that occurred during his presidency. The IRA, and by association the Russians, tried to use the Twitter platform to spread disinformation to help elect Trump as President in 2016 and continued to support his agenda in the first year of his presidency.