美国国家公共电台 NPR Russia's Divisive Twitter Campaign Took A Rare Consistent Stance: Pro-Gun

 

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

All right, earlier this year, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted¹ a Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency. We are now learning more about Russia's influence campaign on social media against the United States, and specifically we're learning how supportive it was of guns and the National Rifle Association.

Usually this Russian troll campaign would try to cause chaos² by supporting both extremes of any political issue - not with guns, though. And joining us to talk about why that might be is NPR's Tim Mak. Hi there again Tim.

TIM MAK, BYLINE³: Hi there.

KELLY: First off, reporting on Russian troll farms is hard - to try to figure out what they're up to. Tell me how you've been able to reach these conclusions about the social media messaging.

MAK: So we started with a big question. How did the Internet Research Agency talk about guns and the NRA? Last year, Twitter identified thousands of accounts that were linked to this Russian troll farm. But they quickly deleted that content. But two professors at Clemson realized that one of their research labs had accidentally saved all the tweets in the world over that timeframe, allowing them to save a record of Russian information operations on Twitter. So we worked with Clemson to find the tweets that related to guns, about 30,000 posts.

KELLY: And what did you find in these 30,000 posts?

MAK: So from - on every issue from race to health care, women's rights to police brutality⁴, accounts associated with this Russian troll farm promoted extreme views on both the left and on the right except with guns and the NRA. Seventy-seven percent of the troll farm's content was pro-gun, pro-NRA, and only 11 percent was against.

You also saw that the pro-gun tweets had almost five times the reach as the anti-gun tweets. You'd also have accounts that were supposed to mimic⁵, for example, a real American on the left. That account would push out content on, say, Black Lives Matter. But they'd also be pro-gun. There was no other issue where the Russian accounts acted like this.

KELLY: Fascinating. OK, give me an example of an account that you - that talked about gun rights and how it talked about them.

MAK: Right. So the NRA and the Russian troll farm were often talking about the same things. Both of them stressed how unsafe they said America was due to violent threats. They especially promoted the idea that gun-free zones and areas with strict gun laws were actually dangerous for the public. We even found cases where the troll farm accounts copied verbatim the social media accounts of the NRA. There was one case, for example, where they plagiarized⁶ the NRA's description of DNC official Keith Ellison. We also found 90 cases where the NRA and the Russian accounts were saying essentially⁷ the same thing or promoting the same message.

KELLY: All right, here's my question. We know from the indictments⁸ the Internet Research Agency was Russians working in Russia. But it sounds like what you found was cases of troll farms targeting very local gun legislation in America. How would they even know to target that?

MAK: You know, that's one big mystery of this case. One possibility might lie in what happens with Maria Butina. We spoke⁹ about her earlier this week. She's the woman who's been charged with being a covert¹⁰ Russian agent who tried to infiltrate¹¹ American conservative groups and the National Rifle Association. We found that the person that's been identified as her alleged¹² handler, the Russian government official, had talked on Twitter to the troll farm. So we'll be really watching closely - her legal process as it continues towards a trial.

KELLY: As it works its way through the courts - all right, that's NPR's Tim Mak. Thank you, Tim.

MAK: Thanks a lot.

1 indicted   

控告，起诉( indict的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The senator was indicted for murder. 那位参议员被控犯谋杀罪。
• He was indicted by a grand jury on two counts of murder. 他被大陪审团以两项谋杀罪名起诉。

2 chaos   

n.混乱，无秩序

参考例句：

• After the failure of electricity supply the city was in chaos.停电后，城市一片混乱。
• The typhoon left chaos behind it.台风后一片混乱。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 brutality   

n.野蛮的行为，残忍，野蛮

参考例句：

• The brutality of the crime has appalled the public. 罪行之残暴使公众大为震惊。
• a general who was infamous for his brutality 因残忍而恶名昭彰的将军

5 mimic   

v.模仿，戏弄；n.模仿他人言行的人

参考例句：

• A parrot can mimic a person's voice.鹦鹉能学人的声音。
• He used to mimic speech peculiarities of another.他过去总是模仿别人讲话的特点。

6 plagiarized   

v.剽窃，抄袭( plagiarize的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The poem employs as its first lines a verse plagiarized from a billboard. 这首诗开头的几行抄袭了一个广告牌上的一节诗。 来自辞典例句
• Whole passages of the work are plagiarized. 那作品整段整段都是剽窃的。 来自辞典例句

7 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

8 indictments   

n.（制度、社会等的）衰败迹象( indictment的名词复数 )；刑事起诉书；公诉书；控告

参考例句：

• A New York jury brought criminal indictments against the founder of the organization. 纽约的一个陪审团对这个组织的创始人提起了多项刑事诉讼。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• These two indictments are self-evident and require no elaboration. 这两条意义自明，无须多说。 来自互联网

9 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

10 covert   

adj.隐藏的；暗地里的

参考例句：

• We should learn to fight with enemy in an overt and covert way.我们应学会同敌人做公开和隐蔽的斗争。
• The army carried out covert surveillance of the building for several months.军队对这座建筑物进行了数月的秘密监视。

11 infiltrate   

vt./vi.渗入，透过；浸润

参考例句：

• The teacher tried to infiltrate her ideas into the children's minds.老师设法把她的思想渗透到孩子们的心中。
• It can infiltrate as much as 100 kilometers into enemy territory at night.可以在夜间深入敌领土100千米。

12 alleged   

a.被指控的，嫌疑的

参考例句：

• It was alleged that he had taken bribes while in office. 他被指称在任时收受贿赂。
• alleged irregularities in the election campaign 被指称竞选运动中的不正当行为