After Florida School Shooting, Russian ‘Bot’ Army Pounced
- 6 years ago
After Florida School Shooting, Russian ‘Bot’ Army Pounced
“What we’re seeing is a continuous assault by Russia to target and undermine our democratic institutions, and they’re going to keep coming at us.”
When the Russian bots jumped on the hashtag #Parklandshooting — initially created to spread news of the shooting — they quickly stoked tensions.
The bots are “going to find any contentious issue,
and instead of making it an opportunity for compromise and negotiation, they turn it into an unsolvable issue bubbling with frustration,” said Karen North, a social media professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
“We’ve had more than a year to get our act together and address the threat posed by Russia and implement a strategy to deter future attacks,
but I believe, unfortunately, we still don’t have a comprehensive plan,” said Senator Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, during a hearing this month on global threats to the United States.
Earlier on Wednesday, before the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., many of those accounts had been
focused on the investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
“What we’re seeing is a continuous assault by Russia to target and undermine our democratic institutions, and they’re going to keep coming at us.”
When the Russian bots jumped on the hashtag #Parklandshooting — initially created to spread news of the shooting — they quickly stoked tensions.
The bots are “going to find any contentious issue,
and instead of making it an opportunity for compromise and negotiation, they turn it into an unsolvable issue bubbling with frustration,” said Karen North, a social media professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
“We’ve had more than a year to get our act together and address the threat posed by Russia and implement a strategy to deter future attacks,
but I believe, unfortunately, we still don’t have a comprehensive plan,” said Senator Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, during a hearing this month on global threats to the United States.
Earlier on Wednesday, before the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., many of those accounts had been
focused on the investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.