After my analysis of daily Internet Research Agency (IRA) tweets and some of Trump’s more popular phrases, I felt that it was imperative to take a look at the mentions of the “Black Lives Matter” movement. This is because of the prominence of events that seem to be against this movement, especially during the Charlottesville Riots in mid-August of 2017. I thought it’d be interesting to see how the IRA trolls responded to these events and their mentions of the movement.
The following plot depicts the number of mentions of “Black Lives Matter” and #BlackLivesMatter from the time frame starting with Trump’s intial announcement of his presidential candidacy in mid-June of 2015 until a year after he took the office of the presidency.
Sadly, I was unable to find a relevant historical event for the day with the highest number of “Black Lives Matter” Tweets on March 31st, 2016. Additionally, I do not want to speculate what the cause of this uptick was though I’d love to know (please contact me if you know the reason!).
On the day with the second most Tweets on the topic, there was a movie released: “Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement” starring Jesse Williams as it details the history of the movement and events that led to its prominence in American culture. Some of these events include the death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, FL and Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO which led to unrest in Ferguson.
Additionally, in retaliation to the Charlottesville white supremacists, we see a sharp spike in mentions of the movement in mid-August of 2017.
My Thoughts on Trolls
The trolls at the IRA were trying to find hot button issues to push on to spread their disinformation and general distrust towards government officials and they found that the “Black Lives Matter” movement helped to accomplish that goal. Whether the trolls were supportive of the Democratic party as they tried to fragment it from within and creating a divide among Hillary Clinton supporters and Bernie Sanders supports or if they voiced support towards the Republican party, they manipulated events in American society to advance their political agenda.