When Looks Deceive and News Is Anything

Department of Informatics and Media

Master Programme in Social Sciences, specialization Digital Media and Society

Two-year Master’s Thesis

When Looks Deceive and News Is Anything But: An Ideology-Centered Critical Discourse Analysis of The Kremlin Meddlers’ Twitter Communication & The Media’s Portrayal of The Meddlers in The Context of The U.S. Presidential Election of 2016 and The Brexit Referendum

Student: Stephan Hentze Nielsen Supervisor: Kerstin Engström

October 2018

Word count: 30973

Abstract

This study takes a qualitative approach to contextualizing and examining the communication of the so-called Kremlin trolls on Twitter, in relation to two major political processes that occurred in 2016, namely the Brexit referendum and the U.S. presidential election. Moreover, the study examines the news media of the two respective countries’ portrayal of the “Kremlin trolls”. The study assesses and problematizes mainstream application and contemporary usage of terminology in relation to two phenomena central to this thesis, namely: “Kremlin trolls”, and “fake news”. The study reconceptualizes the respective concepts into the “Kremlin meddlers” and “deceitful news”, as it was found those terms more accurately reflect both phenomena.

Two sets of empirical data are examined in the thesis, one of which consists of 62 posts derived from 14 accounts of the Kremlin meddlers’ Twitter accounts. The other consists of 30 articles stemming from 10 different news outlets, 5 of which were U.K. news outlets and 5 U.S. news sites, covering the political spectrum from one end to the other. The study applies one theoretical framework to examine both sets of empirical data, namely Teun van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis.

The Kremlin meddlers’ Twitter accounts used two strategies to influence the electorates of both countries, one of which was to hide under the guise of pseudonyms impersonating actual citizens of the two nations. The other strategy employed by the meddlers was to maintain accounts that simulated news outlets, acting and appearing much like a legitimate news outlet would on the platform. The communication of the Kremlin meddlers was primarily aimed at supporters of the ideological right by (re)producing discourse highly critical of the ideological left, this is particularly so for the Twitter accounts seeking to impersonate actual people. The pursuit of ideological polarization is central in their communication.

In the news media’s portrayal of the meddlers, differences are found across the ideological spectrum. The study identifies three themes in the discourse; one portraying the meddlers’ in a humanizing view, one creating a Them vs. Us categorization between Russia and the West, and the last focusing on the meddlers’ impact on democratic processes. Intrinsic to all of the themes is the (re)production of elite discourse, primarily seen through the selective use of voices from the symbolic elite to construct the social reality.

Keywords

Twitter, Social Media, News, Fake News, Kremlin Trolls, Brexit, U.S. Presidential Election 2016, Information Warfare, Discourse, Ideology, Power.

List of figures and tables

Figure 1 - Survey results: Trustworthiness of news outlets based on personal views ...... 41 Figure 2 - Survey results: Describe each newspaper using Left, Right or Centre ...... 42 Figure 3 - Pamela Moore’s tweets ...... 50 Figure 4 - Jenna Abram’s tweets ...... 52 Figure 5 - David Jones’ tweets ...... 54 Figure 6 - Special Affair’s tweets ...... 55 Figure 7 - Jihadist Wife’s tweets ...... 56 Figure 8 - Tennessee GOP’s tweets ...... 57 Figure 9 - Kansas City Daily News’ tweets ...... 59 Figure 10 - Baltimore Online’s tweets ...... 60 Figure 11 - Cleveland Online’s tweets ...... 61 Figure 12 - San Francisco Daily’s tweets ...... 61 Figure 13 - Atlanta Online’s tweets ...... 62 Figure 14 - Baton Rouge Voice’s tweets ...... 63 Figure 15 - Missouri News’ tweets ...... 64 Figure 16 - Pigeon Today’s tweets ...... 65 Table 1 - List of news outlets, ideological leaning and number of articles…………………..44

Table of Contents

1. Introduction ...... 4 1.1 Purpose and research questions ...... 6 1.2 Structure of the thesis ...... 6 2. Background ...... 8 2.1 Twitter ...... 8 2.2 The Brexit referendum ...... 8 2.3 The U.S. presidential election 2016 ...... 9 2.4 The Kremlin trolls ...... 9 3. Literature review ...... 11 3.1 Defining trolls and trolling...... 11 3.2 Trolling political discussion spaces ...... 14 3.3 Exploring fake news ...... 18 3.4 Summarization ...... 22 3.5 Contributions to the field ...... 23 4. Theoretical framework and analytical tools ...... 26 4.1 Exploring Discourse Studies ...... 26 4.2 Introduction to Teun van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis ...... 28 4.2.1 Ideology ...... 30 4.2.2 Power, dominance and control ...... 31 4.2.3 Discourse, access and context ...... 32 4.2.4 Analytical tools ...... 33 4.2.5 Macrorules and discourse topics ...... 34 4.2.6 Critique ...... 35 4.2.7 Application ...... 36 5. Methodology ...... 38 5.1 Collection of empirical data ...... 39 5.1.1 The Kremlin meddlers’ tweets ...... 39 5.1.2 Online news sites ...... 41 5.2 Analytical approach ...... 47 5.3 Ethics...... 48 6. Analysis ...... 50 6.1 The Kremlin meddlers’ Twitter communication ...... 50 6.1.1 The voices of “citizens” ...... 50 6.1.2 The Kremlin “news outlets” ...... 59 6.1.3 Sub conclusion ...... 66 6.2 The U.K. and U.S. news media’s portrayal of the meddlers ...... 70 6.2.1 Theme 1: Occupational meddlers ...... 71 6.2.2 Theme 2: Russia versus the West ...... 74 6.2.3 Theme 3: The meddlers’ impact ...... 78 6.2.4 Sub conclusion ...... 80 7. Conclusion ...... 83 7.1 Limitations of the study ...... 85 7.2 Future research ...... 85 8. References ...... 87 9. Appendices ...... 97

1. Introduction

In 2016, the international community watched as, what many deemed to be highly unusual results in the world of politics, shook the global political landscape, not once, but on two separate occasions. The two results in question were the presidential election in the United States and the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom. Today the consequences are still being felt in the form of turbulent political environments in both countries and have left experts, politicians, and the media scrambling to come up with explanations for why these events unfolded as they did.

It seems reasonable to surmise that the news media, not only, had a significant interest in these major political events, but also, and an important role to play. Traditionally, the production of news has been a task held only by specific institutions in society, such as newspapers and later, with the arrival of the television, television networks stations. This meant that the production of news was centralized and to a much greater extent than today controlled by, what some might label, elite institutions. Today, however, the landscape has changed immensely. Traditional newspapers are now struggling to survive on subscriptions alone and have had to rely on ads in print and digitally to make a profit, while TV networks face a similar struggle for survival (Altheide, 2014, pp. 4-5). Another element is online news dissemination: In the last decade, over 2.4 billion people have joined social media platforms (Statista, 2017) where they also consume news. In fact, a survey on news consumption via social media platforms found that 67 percent of U.S citizens consume some news via social media (Pew Research Center, 2017). One could then easily surmise that more vigilance and source criticism is required by the consumers of news today compared to the past; not just to determine whether a given news story should be taken seriously but also to identify the sender. Now more than ever it is crucial to determine who is actually producing and reporting legitimate news and who is merely producing and reporting an imitation of the selfsame, possibly even with malicious intent.

There has been much debate about whether or not the social media platforms Twitter and Facebook have had a role in how the results of the two major political events in question played out. These platforms have been linked to troll accounts and bot-networks that pose as “real users” and take advantage of the social media sites’ algorithms in an attempt to influence the two countries’ electorates towards certain political alignments, most commonly far right- leaning (Mortimer, 2017). This was for instance done by making use of doomsday rhetoric and

4 spreading so-called fake news (Mortimer, 2017). There have been speculations that the people behind these trolls and/or bot-accounts potentially are connected to Russian meddling in western politics; the purpose being to mislead the electorate, delegitimize the traditional media through use of fake news, and to destabilize the political landscape (Booth, et al., 2017).

In October of 2017, Twitter identified and released a list of 2,752 accounts to the United States House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, who released it to the public on November 1, 2017 (House Intelligence Committee, 2017). Although Twitter never specified the procedures involved in identifying these accounts. Twitter claimed the accounts were all operated by individuals located in a building owned by the company “Internet Research Agency” in Saint Petersburg, Russia (Carroll, 2017). The news media has since coined the terms Troll factory and the Kremlin trolls to describe the building and the people in charge of the operations respectively (Booth, et al., 2017). To briefly give an idea of what the term “troll” refers to, it is a term that is broadly used to describe individuals who deliberately seek to provoke other online users and spread chaos by engaging in provocative and sometimes even aggressive communication of some form (Booth, et al., 2017) – however, the term is not without its problems, which I will get back to later in the thesis.

If we assume a well-informed society is necessary for a functioning democracy, then what can attempts at distorting what is factual, and what is fictional do to a society? From a social scientific standpoint, one can deliberate various consequences from campaigns of disinformation in attempts to meddle and destabilize political processes in foreign nations through means of discourse. Such behavior, if left unconfronted, can be detrimental to democratic societies and their institutions, as it carries a risk of e.g. hindering people’s willingness to engage in democratic debates if they are constantly faced with armies of trolls attempting to throw the discourse off course. Furthermore, the spreading of fake news might even negatively impact people’s desire to remain well-informed. Such behavior might cause people to become disillusioned with not only engaging in democratic processes, but also in terms of trusting information disseminated by institutions that are traditionally attributed some legitimacy; be it the media, academic institutions or governmental bodies. If people start believing everything is fake news, the lines between what is factual and what is not, become blurred and the risks become clear immediately.

1.1 Purpose and research questions In light of the above, the purpose of this thesis is: First and foremost to examine how the Kremlin meddlers1 communicated via Twitter, in the context of the two major political events: The U.S. presidential election of 2016, and the Brexit referendum the same year. Secondly, to examine the discourse surrounding how the Kremlin meddlers were portrayed in traditional news outlets from both countries. In the thesis, it is interpreted that a discursive struggle took place between two actors, namely the meddlers and the news media. Therefore, in order to examine how these actors expressed ideology to influence readers and shape their perceptions, two research questions were formulated. I argue that both the Kremlin meddlers and the news media’s discursive acts were necessary to critically scrutinize, in order to get the full picture of the events that occurred before, during and after the two democratic processes in 2016. As such the research questions complement each other due to the fact that they allow me to critically examine both sides of the discursive struggle. On one hand to understand how the meddlers sought to influence electorates before the two democratic processes. And on the other hand, the news media’s role in constructing a social reality, which through critical scrutinity can reveal how the public is meant to perceive the news, and ultimately allow for the deliberation of why the meddlers were portrayed as they were.

RQ1: What characterizes the communication of the Kremlin meddlers in their Twitter profiles?

RQ2: How is ideology (re)produced through discourse in the British and U.S. news media’s portrayal of the Kremlin meddlers? 1.2 Structure of the thesis

• Chapter 2 - Background: In the next chapter, I will give a brief background on certain topics I deem are of particular importance, and thus require some level of familiarity in order to get the best possible point of departure for understanding various terms used to in the thesis. • Chapter 3 - Literature review: In this chapter, I will identify and subsequently detail and review the current body of literature within the primary topics I will be working within. These topics will specifically be: Trolling, politically motivated trolling, and fake news. At

1 The “Kremlin meddlers” is a redefinition of The “Kremlin Trolls”, that I made. I found the terminology more salient in describing the phenomenon. In the closing section of the literature review, I detail why I found it necessary to operationalize a different term.

the end of the chapter, I will summarize the points I deem most salient for the context of my thesis, as well as detail my contributions to the field. • Chapter 4 - Theoretical framework: For this chapter, I will introduce the theoretical framework I will be using for my analysis. I start with an exploration of discourse studies, next I explain Critical Discourse Analysis. I will also address my application of the theory, and critique it. • Chapter 5 - Methodology: Aside from explaining the methodology I will also explain the research design of the thesis and provide a detailed description of my empirical data collection process, coding, and how I intend to analyze the empirical data. Finally, I will also expound on the ethical contemplations I have made in relation to my thesis. • Chapter 6 - Analysis: In this chapter, I will analyze the empirical data, which consists of Twitter posts by the Kremlin meddlers, and news articles from news sites for both the U.K. and the U.S. • Chapter 7 - Conclusion: Along with concluding the main points of the thesis, I will touch on the limitations of my study and future research.

Some notes for the rest of my thesis:

• Whenever I italicize a word or a phrase, it is either to indicate that the particular word or phrase is stressed, and therefore requires special attention, or to emphasize that I am referring to a theoretical term. In both cases, I would argue the meaning of the italicization will be obvious given the particular context in which it is used. • Whenever I refer to the Kremlin trolls, I merely refer to the phenomenon or concept as put forward by either Twitter, the media or other scholars - I do not engage in speculations or evaluative considerations in the sense that I am taking a stance for or against individuals or a group. Up until this point I have used “so-called” before the Kremlin trolls and fake news, and while I will not always write it throughout the thesis it is henceforth implied that the Kremlin trolls and fake news both refer to their usage in empirical material, such as articles or the like. In the last section of the literature review chapter, I will operationalize my own terms for how I will use them in my analysis.

2. Background

2.1 Twitter

Twitter is an online microblogging service with approximately 330 million active users a month (Statista, 2017). On Twitter users can communicate with brief messages of 280 characters, also called “tweets”. When a user sends a tweet, it is transmitted to this person’s “followers”; i.e. a list of other users who have chosen to sign up or “follow” a certain user to receive the user’s tweets. Users have different ways of interacting with tweets. They can comment on them, “like” them, or “retweet” them. When retweeting, a user shares a tweet publicly with their own list of followers, thus disseminating the tweet to a wider audience (Twitter, 2018). When tweeting, users can also include a “hashtag” in their tweet. A hashtag is written with the hash symbol # and is “used to index keywords or topics on Twitter” in order to allow people to “easily follow topics they are interested in (Twitter, 2018). Hashtags can thus increase the visibility of tweets by many times, if using a popular phrase with a hashtag before it. The average user has approximately 707 followers according to statistics from 2016 (Kickfactory, 2016). 2.2 The Brexit referendum

The term Brexit is an abbreviation for “British exit” and refers to the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union in 2016 (BBC, 2016). Two campaign groups competed for the electorate’s votes: “Remain” led by David Cameron who was the prime minister at the time. The opposing campaign was called “Vote Leave”, was led by Boris Johnson among others (BBC, 2018). The referendum vote took place on June 23, 2016, where 52 percent of the U.K.’s population voted in favor of leaving the union, with 48 percent voting to stay (BBC, 2018). The decision had an immediate effect on British politics; Prime Minister David Cameron resigned and was replaced by Theresa May. Almost a year later, on March 29, 2017, Britain invoked Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, which set in motion the official withdrawal from the EU (BBC, 2018). While the public and political parties in Britain have been described as being more “Eurosceptic” compared to the rest of the EU, the issues that were raised during the campaign – mainly immigration and the loss of national identity – have been hot topics in many Western countries (Hobolt, 2016).

2.3 The U.S. presidential election 2016

On November 8, 2016, the American public went to the voting booths to decide who was to become the 45th President of the U.S., following Barack Obama’s eight years in office (Wikipedia, 2018). The two presidential candidates were Hillary Clinton, former First Lady and U.S. Secretary of State, who was supported by the majority of the Democratic Party, and Donald Trump, businessman and television personality, who had been a major outsider in the Republican race against such party favorites as former Governor Jeb Bush, Governor Scott Walker, and Senator Marco Rubio (Wikipedia, 2018). Around 130 million Americans voted: 48.2 percent of the popular vote went to Hillary Clinton, while 46.1 percent voted for Donald Trump (Wikipedia, 2018). However, in the U.S. the presidency is decided by the Electoral College, not the popular vote; if a candidate gets a majority of 270 electoral votes, he or she wins the presidency. With 306 electoral votes to 232, Donald Trump was declared the winner of the 2016 election (Wikipedia, 2018). Just as Brexit caused immediate ramifications, the election of Donald Trump led to a plunge in global markets and a series of rallies throughout the country under the name “Not my President” (New York Times, 2016). 2.4 The Kremlin trolls

In the past few years, the “Kremlin trolls” has become a colloquially used term, referring to an alleged Russian government-operated and funded effort (Snider, 2018). It is believed that the primary purpose of the effort, which began in 2014, was to manipulate public opinion in foreign nations by spreading misinformation, and sowing discord via the social media platforms Twitter, Facebook and Instagram (Snider, 2018). This was often done in the context of significant democratic processes through accounts using realistic pseudonyms and aliases, making it seem like the accounts represented the voices of ordinary citizens. The efforts of the trolls were not to change public opinion in favor of Russia – rather it was to manipulate citizens into mistrusting democracy, undermining the news media, and turning the public against each other, especially in regards to sensitive social issues. (House Intelligence Comittee, 2018)

After further investigation by the social media platforms in question, and efforts made by U.K. and U.S. intelligence agencies – the trolls’ efforts were traced back to a building in St. Petersburg, which was registered under the ownership of an organization known as the “Internet Research Agency”, henceforth abbreviated IRA. The organization, perhaps better known as the “Troll factory” or similar iterations coined by the media, was owned by Russian business man Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has previously been employed by president Vladimir

Putin (Smith, 2018). Up to 300 employees were working at the IRA at its height in 2016 in 12- hour shifts (Snider, 2018). Some accounts were manually operated by employees at the IRA, though the organization also made use of bot-networks (House Intelligence Comittee, 2018). The social media posts, and ads were exposed to more than 126 million Americans. Whether the efforts had any actual impact in the political processes is still being investigated. (House Intelligence Comittee, 2018)

On February 16, 2018, Prigozhin and 12 other Russian individuals responsible for the IRA were indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice. The Russian government has denied all alleged ties with the organization at interfering in political processes. (House Intelligence Comittee, 2018)

3. Literature review

To claim that extensive amounts of research has been done on the central topics I will be examining in this thesis, would likely be a harsh exaggeration. Compared to many other topics of academic interest, the research in these fields is quite recent, with the majority appearing in the past ten years. This research has been done by scholars primarily within the fields of communication, social sciences, and to a lesser extent information technology. In this chapter I will not be giving an overview of all the research that has done on the topic of trolling, since I find that a significant portion of the literature is largely irrelevant for the scope of my thesis. Instead, I have decided to focus solely on salience; that is salience in relation to my thesis. Thus, I decided to limit myself to focus on literature that, first and foremost, aims to define what trolling is, and what motivates such behavior. Secondly to explore literature specifically on the topic of politically motivated trolling, which I will clarify exactly what entails in the next section. Thirdly, I will be exploring fake news. On that particular topic I find the body of literature to be adequate in the sense that it is not too broad, nor is it too narrow; which I largely ascribe to the relative recentness of the academic interest on the topic. At the end of the chapter, I will summarize the views that are most relevant for my thesis and elaborate on the contributions I am making to the field.

The articles I explore in this literature review were found using a broad range of academic databases, these were specifically: Uppsala University Library, SCOPUS, EBSCOhost, SAGE knowledge, ProQuest, and Google Scholar. I found the articles using the search criteria: “Fake news AND disinformation AND misinformation”, “election meddling”, “Trolling AND Trolls”. Additionally, I also made use of various functions in the aforementioned databases to further limit the scope of the results, e.g. narrowing the language to “English”, the subject area to “social sciences” and “information technology”. Where possible, I also limited the type of articles to “peer-reviewed articles”. 3.1 Defining trolls and trolling

Alongside the definitions I briefly explored in the introduction and the background chapter, which were primarily based on dictionaries and the media’s descriptions of trolls - the academic articles I explore in this section all seek to either establish or make their contributions to definitions of trolling behavior online. Broadly speaking, three different clusters are prevalent in the literature within this topic, each of which I will identify in the upcoming paragraphs. The

11 first cluster defines trolling, and argues that while there are established definitions of “trolling” in place, there has been a significant shift in the meaning of trolling since the early 1990s and early-to-mid 2010s.. The second relates to those scholars who have complemented and expounded upon these definitions, focusing on reasons and motivations for trolling. The third cluster, stresses the so-called under-exploration of the trolling phenomenon and explores reactions to trolling.

A range of scholars define trolling as indicative of antisocial behavior, typically aiming at disruption of communication (Bishop, 2014; Cheng, et al., 2017; Cook, et al., 2017; Tsantarliotis, et al., 2017; Sanfillipo, et al., 2018). Other definitions which have been further built upon in the last decade, date relatively far back, to the end of the 1990s and the early 2000s. Herring, et al., define trolling as “luring others into pointless and timeconsuming discussions” (2002, p. 372), and Donath (1999) claims that trolling is inherently a game of identity deception, whereby not everyone is aware of the game’s rules.

These definitions bring to light the work of another scholar, namely Jonathan Bishop. Bishop (2014) argues there has been a shift in the meaning of what trolling is. In the past, the scholar claimed trolling was a fairly harmless activity that consisted of provoking others online, for some sort of mutual enjoyment between the person trolling, the victim and other internet-users, which is reminiscent of the definitions above. However, today trolling has changed to become more malicious, as it is according to Bishop (2014), no longer provocation to have fun online, but instead abusing others for the troll’s personal enjoyment.

In a study examining trolling in a gaming context, Cook, et al., (2017) contended that the topic of trolling was so severely under-researched in academia, that proper consensus around basic definitions conveying the basic framework of what behavior online constitutes as trolling and the motivations behind engaging in trolling behavior, has not yet been appropriately established, which has resulted in what the authors describe as “academic confusion”. In the study, the authors sought to firstly establish a definition of trolling and establish their motivations. According to Cook, et al. (2017, p. 10), via their interviews with 22 self-confessed trolls, found three broad categories for why people engage in trolling behavior.

• Personal enjoyment, i.e. deriving enjoyment from the pleasure of trolling itself • Revenge, which stems from users that have previously been trolled themselves, and now seek to exact revenge on the troll

• Thrill-seeking, referring to trolls that find enjoyment from trolling, but also disregard the possible impact of their actions.

In their research, Cheng, et al. (2018) found two other motivators, one of which is closely related to the motivators identified by Cook et al., namely mood. Mood relates to users engaging in trolling behavior out of three types of moods, listed from the most common to the least common trolling mood; either out of boredom, for the purpose of fun, or in order to vent (Cheng, et al., 2017, p. 1218). The other motivator is discussion context, which suggests that the contents and behavior of other users in a given discussion influences whether a user chooses to engage in trolling behavior. The scholars found that negative, and less serious discussions were more likely to trigger trolling, than if the discussion was positive and more serious (Cheng, et al., 2017, p. 1219). Scholars largely agree that the motivation and triggers for engaging in trolling behavior are not only complex, but also under-explored, and thus require further research (Donath, 1999; Herring 2002; Cheng 2017; Sanfillipo, et al., 2018).

However, the majority of the scholars in the literature exploring trolling online, would likely be on some level of disagreement with the above-mentioned scholar, as they claim there is a common thread apparent in other academic articles; contending that while trolling might not exactly be amongst the most extensively researched topics in academia, there are in fact well- established definitions of trolling (Hardaker, 2010; Cheng, et al., 2017; Tsantarliotis, et al., 2017; Sanfillipo, et al., 2018).

A final motivation for engaging in trolling behavior is one that I would like to add. It is not explicitly mentioned or found in any of the literature I have explored, which points toward the claim I made in the first paragraph of this chapter; namely that this field of study is rather new. I have called this motivator Economic profits. As the term suggests, it refers to the troll, in one way or another, being paid troll. As I explained in the background chapter, the Kremlin meddlers are employees at the Internet Research Agency, which is situated in Saint Petersburg. As such, these “trolls” do not fall into any of the previously established categories, for instance Personal enjoyment, Revenge or Thrill-seeking – rather their primary motivator is that of Economic profits.

Claire Hardaker (2010) defines trolling as posting messages or engaging in behavior in order to provoke other users into conflict. She claims there are usually four different reactions and scenarios to trolling attempts online. Trolling can according to Hardaker (2010, p. 237) be:

• frustrated if users correctly interpret an intent to troll • thwarted, if users correctly interpret intent to troll, but counter in such a way as to curtail or neutralize the success of the troll • failed, if users do not correctly interpret an intent to troll and are not provoked by the troller • successful, if users are deceived into believing the troller’s pseudo-intention(s), and are provoked into responding sincerely

With the relevant definitions and dimensions of trolling explored within the literature, I will now explore trolling of a political nature. 3.2 Trolling political discussion spaces

As I previously stated, I decided to focus on literature, which examined the notion of trolling in political contexts, i.e. trolling political discussion spaces, e.g. internet forums, tweets, and Facebook posts during elections or any sort of political happening or process. As was established in the previous section, scholars found that trolling was typically motivated by aspects such as a person’s mood, or the tone in an online discussion. However, scholars have, in recent years, found significantly different motivating factors with the emergence of so-called political, or ideological trolling. In their study examining the so-called Kremlin trolls, Zelenkauskaite and Niezgoda (2017) found that the type of trolling performed by these particular trolls, departed significantly from what they call “the mere subcultural phenomenon” (Zelenkauskaite & Niezgoda, 2017, p. 1), i.e. the type that was discussed in the previous section. Instead, the authors found the Kremlin trolls to be used in contexts, whereby the name refers to the phenomenon of astroturfing. Astroturfing (a wordplay on the term “grassroots”, to a synthetic material meant to resemble organic grass) refers to the concept of making it seem like there is widespread support and grassroots efforts from the general public e.g. for a specific political issue, though, in reality, such support is merely an illusion to mislead the public, and likely fueled by a political institution, or ad agency generating attention, and not actual people supporting the issue in question (Ibid.).

One example relates to research regarding the Pakistan elections in 2013, whereby Younus, et al., (2014) argued that Twitter has become a primary platform for political activists to engage in political issues. In analyzing Twitter conversations Younus, et al., (2014) found that in a significant portion of these conversations, the political engagement happened in the form of “trolling”, whereby users belonging to one political alignment, would seek to attack other political parties and their members via language characterized by profanity and other

14 negatively-loaded language. Another example of behavior patterns in election trolling on Twitter, were found in the context of the 2012 parliamentary election in Catalonia (Abril, 2016). Similar to the previous researchers, Abril (2016) collected tweets using specific hashtags over a period of four weeks before the election took place. Similarly basing her framework on previous research in successfully identifying trolls online (Abril, 2016), in order to capture the characteristics of trolling behavior, tweets containing profanity were the primary analytical focus. A primary claim of the research was that political trolling on Twitter could have implications for democracy and the public sphere, as successful trolls can limit democratic behavior, thus affecting the public sphere negatively, and this was significantly enhanced in cases where the tweets broke through to the mass media (Abril, 2016).

The claim that trolling can affect democratic behavior online negatively, is mirrored by Jessikka Aro. In her article, Aro (2016) scrutinized the so-called Kremlin trolls in a Finnish context and examined how they used social media platforms as a means to broadcast disinformation (pp. 122-123). The researcher found that the trolls imitate recognizable topics that are regularly featured by the traditional news media outlets (Ibid.). Using hate-speech and right-leaning ideological views, the trolls manipulate readers into thinking that the trolls’ views and reports are a legitimate alternative to the traditional news outlets (Ibid.). This subtler way of altering traditional news stories, which leads to the creation and spreading of fake news online, is according to Aro even more sinister than what the author calls “ridiculous Soviet- style argumentation” (Ibid., p. 126). The author also claims that the reason this type of propaganda and disinformation has become so widely used by groups such as the Kremlin trolls, is because it is much cheaper to the alternatives, such as television, radio or print (Ibid.).

Karen Lumsden and Heather Morgan (2017), explored trolling, and how trolling is portrayed in British newspapers. Like some of the formerly discussed scholars in this section, the authors found that trolls made use of negatively-loaded language, excessive profanity and threats, particularly against women. Moreover, Lumsden and Morgan (2017) distinguished between tabloid and broadsheet newspapers and found vast differences in their coverage of trolling. Tabloid newspapers would focus on trolling stories related to celebrities, whereas broadsheet newspapers focused on victims from the general public, politicians and people from the business sector (Lumsden & Morgan, 2017).

The scholars also discovered another dimension in their research, i.e. that the newspapers’ coverage of the trolling topic was rather problematic for two different reasons. Firstly, through

15 analyzing 175 articles, they found newspapers to be reinforcing and normalizing silencing strategies in the sense that people should just accept being trolled with a “suck it up” frame of thought. Furthermore, that victims of trolling, particularly women, were viewed as passive, powerless and submissive victims online (Lumsden & Morgan, 2017). Secondly, in general, the newspapers’ terminology in defining trolls and trolling behavior was not without its problems either. According to Lumsden and Morgan (2017) newspapers would often define any sort of disagreement or even debate between different users as trolling, thus downplaying the actual effect that trolling might have on its victims.

The acceptance of trolling is another commonality the body of literature points to. It relates to the idea that users online, as well as the media, like Lumsden and Morgan found in their article, continuously reinforce the notion that trolling should just be accepted as a normal pattern of behavior and a naturally occurring phenomenon online. Exploring aggressive behavior online in the context of political discussions online, Hmielowski, et al. (2014) similarly discovered that users, through socialization, were made to accept trolling as a part of the norm. In their study, the scholars also found that this acceptance of trolling behavior, increased intentions to engage in similar behavior, thus resulting in a cycle whereby continuous acceptance will result in continuous flaming, and vice versa.

This research within the cluster, centers on trolling that is not necessarily connected to any specific political event directly, but rather to trolls that partake in the public debate on various political issues with the intent to provoke and inflame a public debate that might otherwise be considered on-topic (Paavola & Jalonen, 2015). Some scholars argue that the ease, accessibility, lack of gatekeepers and censorship on social media platforms, is what makes the environment ripe for trolling behavior (Paavola & Jalonen, 2015). Multiple scholars also emphasize the difficulties in fighting trolling behavior on social media platforms, not only because it is hard to determine what constitutes as trolling, and whether an account is real or e.g. a fake account or part of a bot-network, but also because it raises serious concerns for freedom of speech if people are incorrectly banned for trolling (Paavola & Jalonen, 2016; Aro, 2016; McGonagle, 2017). Similarly, whether a user is intentionally spreading fake news with ill-intent or simply re-sharing legitimate news in good faith, which may then turn out to actually be fake news, raises serious concerns for fighting fake news and online trolling (Koohikamali & Sidorova, 2017).

In their two studies, one using data from 289 undergraduate students answering a questionnaire, and the other a questionnaire answered by 305 individuals who said they frequented political blogs, seeking to explore aggressive online behavior online in a political context Hutchens et al. (2015), found that there are two primary factors that explain why people flame in online political discussion. The primary reason being that people are more likely to flame if directly confronted or challenged by other people online, and less likely if the confrontation is indirect. In more tangible words, if person A responds with a message that directly addresses person B’s views and challenges, or otherwise opposes person B’s comment, person B will be more likely to engage in flaming behavior. However, if person B’s comments are challenged in an indirect manner, i.e. if person A writes a post outlining his or her political views, which may very well might clash with person B’s views, as long as no direct mention is made to person B, that person will be much less likely to flame (Hutchens, et al., 2014, pp. 1213-1214).

The second reason relates to the aspect of anonymity. From their two separate questionnaires the authors found that anonymity made much less of an impact that what they had originally anticipated, in fact both the results of both questionnaires showed that the respondents’ intentions to flame were not at all influenced by whether their identities were anonymized or not (Hutchens, et al., 2014). This directly contradicts what I explored in the background section in relation to anonymity and trolling, and the authors too called for more research to be made on the relation between anonymity and flaming, further stating that the results may also be affected by “our hypothetical situations were not a strong enough manipulation to show the importance of anonymity.” (Ibid., p. 1214).

Indeed, some of the literature on political trolling points in the other direction when it comes to anonymity. Here, a number of scholars found that anonymity plays a vital role when a user decides to troll, (Robertson, 2015; Aro, 2016; Zelenkauskaite & Niezgoda, 2017; Lumsden & Morgan, 2017). This is particularly the case in relation to the so-called Kremlin trolls as they use anonymity, or perhaps more accurately assume pseudonyms, to mislead and deceive users online into thinking their online identity is a true reflection of their real-life identity. However, in reality it is an imitation to spread a certain agenda (often right-leaning or pro-Russian), which both articles in the body of literature I identified examining the Kremlin trolls pointed towards (Aro, 2016; Zelenkauskiate & Niezgoda, 2017).

Such behavior is not defined as trolling by the authors though, as one might think by now, instead they chose to define it as flaming (Zelenkauskaite & Niezgoda, 2017). In order to avoid

17 mixing up these terms, flaming specifically relates to behavior whereby the flamer (i.e. the person flaming) utilizes aggressive and often derogatory language, often aimed directly at another individual. I would like to stress that, in the context of this thesis, trolling is viewed as the broader category whereby flaming and otherwise aggressive behavior online might occur. In other words, trolls can, and often do, engage in flaming online, but leading people into pointless discussions without the use of derogatory or otherwise aggressive discursive acts would not be flaming - therefore, I contend that while the article does not explicitly mention the notion of trolling per se, flaming can indeed fit under the definition of trolling, which several scholars also point towards (Hardaker, 2010; Bishop, 2014; Cook et al., 2017; Lumsden & Morgan, 2017; Zelenkauskaite et al., 2017). 3.3 Exploring fake news

In the literature I found that scholars use two vastly different conceptualizations of fake news. One pertains to what I have chosen to define as transparent fake news, and intentional fake news. The first refers to fake news of a distinctly satirical nature, e.g. referring to American news satire TV-shows such as The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (Barnhurst, 2011; Balmas, 2014; Berkowitz & Schwartz, 2016). Both shows are transparent in stressing that they are not, and therefore should not be perceived as a legitimate source of news (i.e. fake news per this definition), as they are in fact hosted by comedians with the intent to entertain people, and not by journalists with journalistic ethics and standards to adhere to. I mention this type of fake news not because I want to elaborate on it more than I already have, rather, I would argue it is important to briefly clarify that one should distinguish between the two types because they are so inherently different, so misconceptions are avoided altogether in discussing this issue. With that covered I will now devote to the rest of this section to exploring what I defined as intentional fake news.

Tandoc Jr., et al. (2018), took this categorization even further in their study. They deemed fake news to be a problematic term within academia, and therefore sought to summarize and lay out a framework for how previous scholars have operationalized fake news, in order to make the term less problematic in the future. The scholars examined 34 studies from 2003 to 2017 and mapped out the different operationalizations of fake news - which ended up in a total of six types of definitions:

• News satire; i.e. the same kind of news satire tv-shows that I referred to above

• News parody; referring to a quite similar type of fake news, albeit different in that it “Instead of providing direct commentary on current affairs through humor, parody plays on the ludicrousness of issues and highlights them making up entirely fictitious news stories” (ibid., p. 142). The most well-known example of this is The Onion, a satirical newspaper that exists purely to parody traditional news organizations (Wikipedia, 2018). • News fabrication; meaning news pieces that have no basis in reality and are intentionally misleading, but made to look like traditional news articles, in style, typography etc. • Photo manipulation; much as the name would suggest, it refers to the manipulation of pictures for the purpose of changing the context, slightly or entirely, to fit a certain narrative. In practice this could e.g. be editing an image by cropping out certain elements or inserting elements that were not in the original image. Using images that are not connected to the story in any way, but are used solely for manipulation is also one a common strategy, even seen in the mass media from time to time (Tandoc Jr., et al., 2018, pp. 144-145) • Advertising; i.e. news reports that are made to seem as if they were from a news outlet, but are in fact from an advertisement agency, that are selling a product or promoting an idea. Another example are public relations agencies sometimes paid for by politicians, to promote themselves or a political issue. These may even be incorporated into ad breaks between news broadcasts on cable news shows (Ibid., p. 145). • Propaganda; partly overlapping with advertising, it essentially relates to showing material for the purpose of benefitting a politician, political party or organization in the eyes of the public. The primary goal of propaganda is to persuade and not to inform, and is similarly made to seem as if it stems from a news outlet.

(Ibid.)

There is a general consensus amongst the scholars in the literature I am utilizing in this study, that fake news is, per definition, intentional and at the same time, whatever topic the news piece might be about, there are elements that are verifiably incorrect (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Lewandowsky, et al., 2017; Tandoc Jr., et al., 2018).

In their study, Lewandowsky et al. set out to examine why fake news has become more prevalent in recent years, and how this growing prevalence of fake news and general misinformation in the media and the public discourse, influences society (2017). The authors claim that the presence of misinformation is a significant threat to the well-being of society and

19 envisions a rather gloomy future scenario in a post-truth world. They contend that a well- informed society vital for a functioning democracy (Ibid.), and that a society without well- informed citizens, democracy would likely start to crumble (Ibid.). To further clarify, if citizens were to begin taking a liberal stance in relation to what is considered factual and objective, and what is not, or in other words begin relying on data which has no factual basis, and instead distrust data which is actually factual, what was once merely a what-if scenario might become a very real threat to the continued pursuit of an empirically based society, where the demarcation between fact and fiction is of paramount importance.

There are a variety of factors that have increased the prevalence of fake news in the public discourse according to Lewandowsky et al. (2017). Firstly, the media landscape, which as I touched upon in the introduction, has seen enormous changes especially since the 1990s, combined with, as I also discussed in the background chapter, a considerable decline in journalists. In addition to that the immense popularity of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, have contributed significantly to this increase in the prevalence of fake news as it has become much easier to disseminate information, be it fake, misleading or not, to a much wider audience than before the advent of these platforms. Secondly, the authors claim that fake news and deliberate spreading of misinformation are extremist responses to sociocultural issues that are in a downwards spiral, particularly in the U.S. according to Lewandowsky et al. (2017). These social issues the authors highlight are: Decline in social capital, growth in inequality, increased polarization and a decreasing trust in science (Ibid., pp. 357-359).

Other scholars see fake news and disinformation as central tools in an information war taking place, whereby contrasting narratives and ideologies fight for the attention of not only internet users, but also in breaking through to the mainstream media. In a Ukrainian context, Khaldarova & Pantti (2016) explored alleged fake news narratives on the Russian TV channel, Channel One as well as how Twitter users perceived the accuracy of these narratives. The authors found that this so-called information war is mainly taking place in contexts where Russian (pro-Kremlin, more specifically) ideology and narratives clash with Western ideology and narratives (Khaldarova & Pantti, 2016). Also in a Ukrainian context, similar findings were made by Joanna Szostek, who explored news consumption and perception of credibility in a media environment where according to the author, Western narratives are competing with Russian (Szostek, 2017).

Moreover, in this body of literature, some scholars point to a possible solution in the fight against fake news and disinformation by means of fact-checking all news, and not merely relying on the news outlets (and those who imitate news outlets) to perform this fact and source- checking themselves since evidence has shown, time and time again, that it is far from sufficient in contemporary society (Rubin, et al., 2015; Khaldarova & Pantti, 2016; Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Lewandowsky, et al., 2017). In this fact-checking context, some scholars argue for some variation of automatized fact-checking, e.g. via running complex scripts or using algorithms to verify the point of origin of the news piece, and cross-checking information from one news piece with other possible sources in order to better validate and fact-check news, and establish the so-called ground-truth (Rubin, et al., 2015; Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Lewandowsky, et al., 2017). Other scholars, while not necessarily against automatized fact- checking; contend that the main responsibility falls on shoulders of the social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter, and other so-called tech giants such as Google, who are largely the main catalysts for the dissemination of fake news and misinformation, which is often characterized by virality because of the immense popularity of the services these companies offer (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Lewandowsky, et al., 2017).

Furthermore, according to some scholars, governments and intergovernmental institutions (for instance the EU) must also take a more active role in combatting fake news and misinformation (Lewandowsky, et al., 2017). It is also believed that news organizations and journalists need to take responsibility in setting stricter standards, not only in making their own published works more transparent in terms of the validity and accuracy of the claims made, but also in admitting instances where the required standards are not met (Rubin, et al., 2015; Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Lewandowsky, et al., 2017). Finally, people that use social media need to educate themselves and be aware that instances of fake news and attempts at spreading misinformation does occur on social media platforms, and that they might actually be unintentionally exacerbating the problem through interacting (commenting, liking, sharing etc.) with fake news, thus broadcasting the “news” to a wider audience, which is often the exact intention of fake news, as I discovered in the background chapter.

Some of these solutions to combat fake news and misinformation already exist, for instance the Ukrainian website Stopfake.org (Khaldarova & Pantti, 2016), and the previously mentioned instance of The Washington Post’s ongoing efforts in fact-checking claims that the American president Donald Trump made in the first 406 (and counting) days of taking office (The Washington Post, 2018). Other efforts also exist, for instance the Alliance for Securing

Democracy (GMF, 2018). Put briefly, the program is an ongoing effort by the non-partisan think tank “The German Marshall Fund”, to monitor and keep track of tweets made by Twitter accounts with affiliation to Russian disinformation campaigns (GMF, 2017).

The phenomenon and dangers of echo chambers are also explored by some scholars (Bakshy, et al., 2015; Flaxman, et al., 2016; Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017). An echo chamber is a phenomenon whereby social media user become insulated from perspectives and ideas that exist outside of their interests, and the interests of their social media peers. Through interactive functionality on the social media platforms such as liking the page of a political party or a newspaper on Facebook, or following a politician or a journalist on Twitter, or even having friends that have similar interests and ideological preferences, the user will, amplified by the algorithm of the platform, shape the information and contents on his/her frontpage entirely. Unless the user actively uses the interactive functionality available (liking, befriending, commenting, following or sharing) on perspectives outside of the user’s own interests, the user will indeed find him/herself isolated in an echo chamber from outside perspectives (Bakshy, et al., 2015; Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Lewandowsky, et al., 2017). Flaxman et al., call this phenomenon ideological and information segregation and claim it can have dire consequences for democracy, as democracy is reliant on its citizens having diverse understanding of a range of political views, which is utterly eliminated with echo chambers (Flaxman, et al., 2016, pp. 298-299). These sentiments are mirrored by Lewandowsky et al. (2017) and Bakshy et al. (2015), who further claim that echo chambers have the added effect of deceiving people into thinking that the views and opinions held by them and their peers within the echo chamber, are views and opinions widely shared throughout society, whereas in reality, it far from the truth (Bakshy, et al., 2015; Lewandowsky, et al., 2017). Which according to the authors, makes people in echo chambers “particularly resistant to belief revision”, i.e. unlikely to change their opinion or be corrected (Lewandowsky, et al., 2017, p. 362). 3.4 Summarization

In this chapter, I have covered three topics that are central to my thesis. In regards to the first section, I covered studies that had made their contributions to establish definitions of trolling, or motivations behind engaging in trolling behavior online, and reactions to trolling. Based on this literature, I feel confident to state that, within academia, fundamental definitions of the terms “trolls” and “trolling”, are present and relevant, in that it covers users that engage in antisocial behavior, with intents to inflame debates, and lead other users into pointless debates

(Hardaker, 2010; Cheng, et al., 2017; Tsantarliotis, et al., 2017; Sanfillipo, et al., 2018). As for motivations, one could argue that whilst the topic has seen scholarly research, it is not quite as fully-fledged as the definitions are. Indeed, especially within the past couple of years, the motivations seem to have been changing significantly from the earliest instances of trolling back in the 1990s, 2000s and early years of the 2010s (Donath, 1999; Herring, et al., 2002; Bishop, 2014), which is also part of my reasoning for covering politically driven trolling as a, more or less, separate entity, seeing as it does not accurately reflect the current motivations discussed in the field.

In the second section, exploring trolling in the context of political discussion spaces, the literature pointed to the Kremlin trolls, and similar types of groups becoming a bigger issue in the future, particularly in relation to elections and major political events. Some, mainly in the Ukrainian context by Khaldarova & Pantti (2016) and Szostek (2017), point to an information war, whereby contrasting ideologies fight for the attention of the public. Moreover Lumsden & Morgan (2017) present the view that political trolling has resulted in silencing strategies both in internet culture, but also reinforced by the media, and that this would only make the problem worse.

Finally, I explored the literature on fake news. Here I found that the body of literature is in disagreement on exactly what the term should refer to. Some scholars found salience in referring to satirical news as fake news (Barnhurst, 2011; Balmas, 2014; Berkowitz & Schwartz, 2016). Other studies used fake news as an umbrella-esque term that covers and refers to a broad range of more specific terms such as propaganda advertising and fabrication (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Lewandowsky, et al., 2017; Tandoc Jr., et al., 2018). Overall scholars agreed that more research is needed, as fake news is becoming increasingly prevalent, especially in the media’s usage of the term – and that it is being used as a tool in information wars between contrasting narratives. (Khaldarova & Pantti 2016; Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Lewandowsky, et al., 2017; Tandoc Jr., et al., 2018). 3.5 Contributions to the field

My thesis will contribute to the growing number of academic literature in the within the topics of trolling, fake news and politically motivated trolling. I also find it likely that my thesis will contribute to a wider discussion and development of the definitions and motivations behind trolling, especially so when it comes to politically motivated trolling, and specifically how such “trolling” is carried out in practice, and the motivations behind it, which differ significantly

23 from traditional trolling. This contribution was also realized through arguing that a new motivator behind engaging in specific acts of trolling, namely trolling for Economic profits, is significantly more reflective of the Kremlin trolls’ practices. Furthermore, I expect that the literature on the topic of fake news will diverge further from what I found in the current literature I identified. Here my thesis will provide a new perspective on how to operationalize fake news, which I will detail later in this section.

I further expect that my thesis will encourage more scholars to critically examine the production of news, especially so in relation to the so-called Kremlin trolls (and similar groups), engaging in the production and dissemination of fake news via social media platforms to electorates, and beyond to traditional news outlets from an ideological view, such as the one I take. I further predict that the somewhat limited amount of academic literature on the topic of the so-called Kremlin trolls will expand much more, and become a topic of greater academic interest, both within the fields of social sciences and information technology. Where currently that topic currently has mainly been covered by Ukrainian scholars (Khaldarova & Pantti, 2016; Szostek, 2017), I expect that other western academics will take great interest in this topic, much like I did.

The term fake news has faced some criticism in academia as highlighted by e.g. (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Lewandowsky, et al., 2017; Tandoc Jr., et al., 2018), which I do acknowledge and agree with. Therefore, I opted for going against most scholars in the field, by choosing not to use the term fake news in my thesis, except in instances where I refer to its usage in empirical material. As I have alluded to earlier, I would argue the fake news as a term has become faulty and, to an extent, tainted by prominent politicians tossing the term around to fit their agenda. The news media too has a role in this by catering to sensationalism, which has further exacerbated and escalated the problem with this term. Thus, I believe that moving away from that terminology will lead to positive results in terms of finding a new, and more salient terminology. I also find that using alternative terminology, e.g. “disinformation”, is too broad to capture the essence of the term. Therefore, I found it more useful to develop my own operationalization of the phenomenon, which I named deceitful news. I ended up choosing this term after much deliberation as I found the term to be more pertinent in describing exactly what the core of the phenomenon actually is. Moreover, I wanted the term to include a dimension covering that it is first and foremost intentional, i.e. the intention to deceive is the most important element of the phenomenon, which the term “fake” does not appropriately reflect. Secondly, I wanted the term to capture the dimension that it might be entirely fabricated, or

24 fraudulent and deceitful in other ways - in my view “fake” is limited in that it only suggests that the story is entirely fabricated, with none of the other factors in the equation.

Through the exploration of the body of literature examining trolling definitions and motivations behind trolling, I found that the trolling definitions would to a minor extent cover and correspond what the Kremlin trolls did in their social media practices. The motivations behind trolling would very likely not correspond to the Kremlin trolls, e.g. in terms of (Cook, et al., 2017), thrill-seeking, revenge and personal enjoyment. However, it was also clear that motivations behind trolling behavior were underexplored and not up to date in academia (Donath, 1999; Herring 2002; Cheng 2017; Sanfillipo, et al., 2018). In terms of disruption and inflaming a debate which several scholars point to, there would likely be some similarities between these (Bishop, 2014; Cheng, et al., 2017; Cook, et al., 2017; Tsantarliotis, et al., 2017; Sanfillipo, et al., 2018)

Because of this, I firmly believe the Kremlin meddlers is a significantly more pertinent description as I based on the definitions explored in this chapter, discovered that the term “troll”, as it is used in contemporary academic literature does little to better grasp neither their behavior nor their motivations. It is very much the opposite in fact, as the usage of “troll” completely misses out on the aspect of intentionality, which in the context of the Kremlin meddlers actions is of paramount importance. I agree with some of the scholars in the literature (Lumsden & Morgan, 2017; Bishop, 2014), who hold the belief that trolling, as it is commonly used, does not appropriately capture the severity of the issues related to politically motivated trolling, e.g. seeking to deliberately interfere in a foreign nation’s political processes. I did not wish to depart from “Kremlin”, because there is evidence the IRA actually does exist, and is likely in some way affiliated with the Russian government, as I explained in the background chapter.

One could critique me for just changing the terminology ever so slightly. However, I did not decide to change the current terminology just for the sake of coining my own terms. I did it because I firmly hold the belief, that the existing terminology in the form of “fake news” and the “Kremlin trolls”, are not used widely because they are the most salient terms; instead they are fueled further by sensationalism in the media and by prominent politicians and public figures. Therefore, I sought salience over sensationalism in my terminology.

4. Theoretical framework and analytical tools

In my thesis I interpret the main phenomena I will be analyzing is part of a struggle over discursive power through expressions of ideology, which can be exercised through control over the media content, both on social media platforms and traditional news outlets. Therefore, I decided to apply Critical Discourse Analysis, which I expect can help me discover how discourse, power and ideology can be (re)produced in journalistic material and through discursive acts on Twitter. 4.1 Exploring Discourse Studies

Throughout the years, discourse studies have been theorized and expounded upon by a number of well-known scholars from a diverse set of academic areas, for widely different purposes. Because there are so many varying definitions of what discourse is, one can easily get confused when the terms discourse and discourse analysis are brought forward in a study. Therefore, I will use the first part of the theoretical chapter to explore the different trajectories within discourse studies.

Finding a point of departure from which a framework was developed that eventually evolved into a theory taking both language and the sociocultural context is perhaps not the easiest task, as there are many differing opinions of which scholars have been the most influential, and what set of criteria are necessary for evaluating this. In any case, one linguist that stood out to me while researching for the thesis, is the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. It is likely that he was one of the founding fathers in terms of forming a structured framework from which discourse theory evolved. In essence, Saussure, as a structuralist, theorized on the mechanisms of language, claiming that language had a structure which influenced its usage in specific contexts, and vice versa, i.e. specific contexts influenced the use of language, thus laying the building blocks for the connection between language analysis, and the sociocultural world in which language is used (Saussure, 1959).

I would argue Saussure could be interpreted as a principal influencer for many well-known discourse studies scholars in the twentieth century, e.g. Michel Foucault, Norman Fairclough, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Ruth Wodak and Teun van Dijk. I will emphasize, that I do not claim the scholars continued Saussure’s exact structuralist philosophy; I acknowledge these scholars diverged, creating their own trajectories - perhaps most prominently post- structuralism. However, as they all, to a lesser or greater extent, explore language and its

26 relation to the social world, I see Saussure’s framework as the starting point from which the paths have since diverged. I will not go into great detail about each of these frameworks, I will however make the argument that one could, albeit quite broadly, differentiate between a few different trajectories within discourse studies. In my view, these trajectories, which I will expound upon below, have been the most decisive in terms of influencing discourse scholars.

A significant portion of these discourse scholars define their theoretical point of departure as belonging to the critical school. In one way or another it has influenced at least some of the discourse scholars mentioned above, e.g. Norman Fairclough, Ruth Wodak, Teun van Dijk and, to an extent, Michel Foucault - but what exactly does belonging to this school of thought entail? In essence, the critical school within social theory, has the primary purpose to remain critical towards the hegemonic structure; more specifically toward institutions or actors in society that in one way or another hold, and exercise subversive social power over people in society, achieving the consent the dominated (Van Dijk, 1993, p. 250). According to this school of thought, it is the job of the critical researcher to ultimately build an understanding of issues in society by examining and scrutinizing these dominating actors in society, taking the perspective of the marginalized groups in society (Van Dijk, 1993, pp. 252-253). Thus, the relation between power, language and society is central to these scholars.

Another of these trajectories is found in Michel Foucault’s discourse framework. In essence, Foucault (1970) theorized that discourse is not merely a medium or a vehicle for communication. Instead he argued that discourse is a part of a power-struggle in society, stemming from his ideas about a given society, inherently and inevitably, consists of institutions that exist in a realm outside of discourse, and act subversively toward the public through a set of continuously reinforced structures, which shape and control all facets of society including all aspects of the social world; from knowledge creation and reproduction, questions of truth and falsity, as well as inclusion and exclusion from participating in discourse (Foucault, 1970).

Another trajectory I would argue, consists of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe views, who, similarly to Foucault are primarily concerned with power perspectives in relation to discourse - however they stand in opposition to Michel Foucault’s institutional power focus. Mouffe and Laclau (2001) regard institutions as being influenced by power relations to the same extent as social norms and all social phenomena, thus, they do not consider institutions to be outside the realm of discourse or rather, extra discursive as Foucault argued (Foucault, 1970). In their view,

27 discourse is not set in a static structure. There is always an on-going struggle between different discourses competing to be perceived as ‘legitimate’ or ‘true’ in the view of people, and this discursive reality is what constructs meaning and therefore the social reality, in which we live (Mouffe & Laclau, 2001).

4.2 Introduction to Teun van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis

So, what is discourse according to Van Dijk?

it is a complex communicative event that also embodies a social context, featuring participants (and their properties) as well as production and reception processes. (Van Dijk, 1988, p. 2)

As the previous section alluded to, there are various different interpretations of what “discourse” is, how it should be approached and what it entails. From the above quote, it is inferable that discourse represents itself at the micro-level, seeing as it is on one hand related to specific communicative events (e.g. text or talk), and on the other hand at the macro-level, because it also involves social contexts, incorporating production and reception processes related to discourse. The two cannot and should not be thought of as separate entities; a text or a speech will inevitably be influenced by the social context in which it was written, and vice- versa.

With Van Dijk’s definition of discourse addressed, I will briefly describe how discourse is understood within the context of this thesis. Put very simply, discourse is, in my view, a structure that organizes meaning as well as how we communicate and talk about things. Spoken broadly, religious discourse will be different from scientific discourse. Certain aspects will be given widely different values and importance. To exemplify, within a religious discourse great importance might be put on values or morals derived from a certain religious text or doctrine. In a scientific discourse, such aspects would hold little to no importance, with the value instead being given to e.g. empirically tested claims, conclusions and the ability to remain objective. Thus, different discourses also have different norms that organize the dominant, or most popular, way to talk about things.

Van Dijk claims that his school of discourse, titled Critical Discourse Studies (abbreviated CDS), and in extension, the theory, Critical Discourse Analysis (abbreviated CDA) is primarily concerned with examining how discourse affects and is affected by a broad range of social

28 issues in society, such as social inequality, power abuse, corruption, discrimination, and institutional racism (Van Dijk, 2008, p. 6).

According to Van Dijk, his framework is purely theoretical (Ibid.), thus contrasting the previously mentioned Norman Fairclough’s framework, which acts simultaneously as both method and theory (Fairclough, 2010). However, despite Van Dijk’s claim that his framework is purely theoretical, the framework does contain analytical techniques and tools, which the researcher can apply in order to find the primary aspects of saliency within the discourse, I will detail these aspects further in the latter part of this chapter. Indeed, one other way Van Dijk’s school departs slightly from Fairclough’s school of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), can be seen in his reconceptualization naming his school CDS instead of CDA. I would argue the most explicit difference between the two scholars lies in the primary focal points of their frameworks. In my view, Van Dijk is very text-near in the sense that the central focus of the theory is on critically interpreting the text itself, how the exercise of power and ideology makes itself apparent within the confines of the text, and how that might influence the reader, which will all become more clear as this chapter progresses. Norman Fairclough’s framework, on the other hand, has a much wider focus; this is perhaps most clearly seen in his three-dimensional model, which is the main foundation of the theory, whereby discourse is critically interpreted on three levels: On the textual level, the level of discourse practice, and on the level of the sociocultural practice (Fairclough, 2010). One could perhaps make the statement that Van Dijk views the text as the primary catalyst for expressing ideologies, social power, therefore influencing readership. Whereas Fairclough sees the text as the entry-point to critically examine the discourse at the level of the production, and at the sociocultural level. Here it is not the text itself which is the prime focal point, but instead the underlying reasons for the text being as it is, thus the two broader levels of Fairclough’s model are attributed a higher level of importance, compared to the actual text itself.

The reason I chose Van Dijk’s framework over some of the other discourse scholars I have mentioned in this chapter, is because of his long history, immense work and deep knowledge of critically examining journalistic material, which I would argue makes his theoretical terms highly relevant for my thesis. In my view, Van Dijk’s theory can be divided into three overarching parts that interweave with one another, and wherein each part also contains its own sub-elements. Van Dijk does not explicitly make these specific divisions himself, though some parts do correspond with chapters in his books. I personally found that breaking the theory into smaller parts to be an easier way of explaining the theory, and for the reader to grasp it as well.

Therefore, in the following sections I will list each of these parts, and subsequently explain them individually.

4.2.1 Ideology Ideology is according to Van Dijk, an intrinsic part of the (re)production of discourse and the exercise of social power, the theoretician defines ideology as “foundational beliefs that underlie social representations of specific kinds of social groups” (Van Dijk, 2006, p. 120). This means there is a social dimension to ideology which is also likened by van Dijk as “belief systems” (Ibid., p. 116). Not unlike languages, ideology cannot be regarded as a phenomenon where the individual has any agency in isolation (Ibid., p. 118). Thus, in much the same sense that no individual person can, logically speaking, have his or her personal language, ideologies are similarly characterized by being socially constructed and shared between people in society, and cannot be regarded as an individual’s personal beliefs, therefore constituting a collective belief system.

Discourse is embedded in ideologies, which means that ideologies form the basis from which discourse is (re)produced (Van Dijk, 2006). This further implies that is through discourse (i.e. language use in all forms) from which ideologies are expressed and acquired by consumers of discourse (re)production - therefore, ideologies control fundamental beliefs and attitudes of a socially constructed nature (Van Dijk, 2006). Based on Van Dijk’s standpoint, namely that ideology is always an intrinsic part of language, I will go from the assumption that all instances of language, and therefore discourse (re)production are characterized by underlying ideologies. In some instances, they might be expressed in an explicit and obvious manner, and in some instances they might be less obvious and not intended to be observable at all – though the point is that ideologies in some form, shape the expressed discourse (Van Dijk, 2006). Such beliefs can e.g. relate to fundamental beliefs, thus a capitalist ideology may favor and stress the importance of a market free from government interference and one with lower taxes, whereas a socialist ideology may control socially shared beliefs for the opposite end of the scale i.e. a bigger role for the government and higher taxes. Racist ideology might control beliefs describing immigration as a negative, and immigrants as lazy, whereas an antiracist ideology would view immigration as a positive and immigrants as being a benefit to a given society. Thus, on one hand ideology is often directly connected with ideological polarization, whereby people ascribing to one ideology might clash with people ascribing to another ideology in their (re)production of discourse, wherein their ideology is expressed, but on the other hand there is

30 also a persuasive element related to expressing ideologies, in garnering support from members of one’s own ideology, and against the opposing ideology.

4.2.2 Power, dominance and control Power, dominance and control pertains primarily to the elite, or rather symbolic elite, in relation to how they maintain and exercise power through dominance, for the purpose of controlling those outside of the elite. A few things are important to emphasize in this context though; who are the symbolic elite? This “group”, consists of politicians, journalists, teachers, scholars, writers and bureaucrats, or in other words, those who hold symbolic power and control means of communication and therefore the (re)production of discourse, and thus structure the public opinion – they construct reality, and do not only reflect it (Van Dijk, 2008, p. 63).

One thing that is important to emphasize though, is that Van Dijk (2008), never discusses power in relation to individual persons, e.g. a famous writer, influential journalist, or a powerful political figure. Power should always be considered in a broader perspective, i.e. the institutions these groups or positions represent, as he puts it “Power is a property of relations between social groups, institutions or organizations. Hence, only social power, and not individual power, is considered here” (Van Dijk, 2008, p. 65)

Control, is not possible without first having access to different social resources a society is built on, e.g. “wealth, income, position, status, force, group membership, education or knowledge” (Van Dijk, 1993, p. 254). Upon having access, control is now attainable. There are two main types of control; action and cognition. In essence they both relate to controlling communicative events and the context in which they should be interpreted (Van Dijk, 1993, p. 256). The first pertains to more tangible physical aspects, such as inhibiting the freedom of others via the use of physical force, e.g. parents using physical force against their children, or the police breaking up a demonstration and restraining people. Cognition on the other hand, refers to the subtler ways in which the symbolic elite can influence the minds of the people that do not have any significant social power. Surprisingly, such influence is often met with consent and an acceptance of the dominated, which is known as hegemony, as theorized by the Marxist, Antonio Gramsci (Carlucci, 2013, p. 181). This is exercised through for instance “persuasion, dissimulation or manipulation” (Van Dijk, 1993, p. 254) via the means of text, video or audio. It must be emphasized though that these tools are indeed subtle, and therefore it is rarely clear or obvious, when control through cognition is being exercised, and to Van Dijk (1993), that is exactly where the role of the critical discourse analyst is the most crucial for bringing these

31 issues to light. The distinction between what could easily be interpreted as colloquial language, and what is merely a subtle imitation of it to push a certain agenda or ideology upon the general public, is vital for the critical researcher to be able to recognize and thus scrutinize.

4.2.3 Discourse, access and context Van Dijk (2008) argues there is an important question of access and context. Access, in a manner reminiscent of Foucault’s thoughts pertaining to exclusion, relates to the notion of who the elite in society permit to partake in the (re)production of discourse. Access to discourse goes hand-in-hand with social power (Van Dijk, 2008). A person working in a grocery store or washing dishes in a restaurant, will very likely not have the same access to the information a person who works as a lawyer may have, in attending court hearings, reading and perhaps writing documents for his clients, be they private, corporate or governmental in some shape. From his job, the lawyer might also encounter people from e.g. the political sector, or the media. Thus, compared to someone with what we could call lower social power, the information a lawyer, or another person with a social standing that might be regarded as high, has access to, is much more likely to be significant in aspects that might influence the public in some way - for instance through government and legislative discourse, bureaucratic discourse, mass media discourse, scholarly and scientific discourse, or corporate discourse. Or put differently aspects related to power and dominance. According to Van Dijk (2008), the actors in society to whom access is sought, typically revolve around:

• The media, who control highly important persuasive means such as the rhetoric in the article, along with layout, the angle, photos etc. • Politicians, primarily prominent or elite politicians are prioritized, but any sort of political influence is sought. • Businesses, mainly the upper echelons of the business world. Those who have enough resources to influence political processes via e.g. lobbying to benefit their business’ interests.

Alongside access comes the notion of context, which in turn is directly connected to power and dominance. Let us take the example of a live news broadcast, which is a very illustrative example showing the structure in controlling the setting and thus the context. First, the news outlet decides which story to feature in the first place. Should the news outlet then decide to report on that story, that story will then automatically be defined as news; simply because it has been deemed newsworthy enough to be featured in the news broadcast. If we go back to

32 the live news broadcast, it is perhaps not too far-fetched that a few “experts” on the broad subject matter of the news, have been invited to participate in the broadcast. During the broadcast, it is likely that the anchor will ask each expert for their opinion on the subject-matter. Thus, we already have a situation, whereby the context has been meticulously controlled in three ways:

• The story has been deemed news worthy and is therefore reported on. • The panel of experts have been picked from a field that is likely quite broad, and have been chosen specifically to participate in the broadcast. • The anchor (and/or producer), are in full control of which expert can speak at any given point in time, and can cut them as they please (either by asking, or simply using technology by muting them, or cutting to a different camera/shot).

Finally then, one could fruitfully think of the elite’s degree of control of access and the context to the (re)production of discourse, to be an indicator of how much dominance and power the elite has in a given context.

4.2.4 Analytical tools Van Dijk claims that there are a multitude of different methods whereby Critical Discourse Analysis, as he intended it, can be realized: Textual analysis, rhetorical analysis, stylistics, genre analysis, conversation analysis, semiotic analysis (Van Dijk, 2008, p. 3). In its purest form, Critical Discourse Analysis is concerned with finding the relation between language use, and how social power is exercised. It is important to emphasize that Van Dijk claims the social practice and the context whereby the discourse is situated, is of equal importance to the given instances of discourse being analyzed, be it textual or oral (Van Dijk, 2008, p. 3). Much in line with discourse analysis’ roots in textual analysis (word, as well as sentence-level analysis), the theoretician stresses a great importance on critically interpreting textual elements as these are examples of power being exercised and ideology being expressed on the micro-level (Van Dijk, 2008, p. 261). This is not only on a sentence-level with aspects such as usage of the active or passive voice, syntax, rhetorical means (metaphors, repetition, persuasion, hyperbole), but also on a word-level, examining e.g., modal verb choices, lexical style (choice of words), capitalization, quotation marks and so forth (Van Dijk, 2008, p. 4).

However, Van Dijk argues that a discourse cannot be thoroughly defined and examined solely via analyzing the micro-elements (word and sentence-level semantics) (Van Dijk, 1988, p. 27). A single sentence of a given text, cannot in isolation define the discourse as a whole, therefore there is also need for a more comprehensive manner to characterize whole discourses. This can be accomplished through macro-level structures (also called superstructures), which help identify the thematic structures of a discourse. Van Dijk (1988) focused specifically on examining instances of journalistic material from the basis of his theory; in this context the theoretician developed a concept of superstructures, which refer to the an overall narrational pattern distinguishable in all articles made up of three categories that can broadly be categorized as:

• Summary, containing the headline and lead paragraph (which is the most significant category, because it contains the most important information according to Van Dijk) (1988, p. 53) • Episode, containing the main events, background, potential comments from the writer. • Consequences, containing the final comments, expectations and evaluations of the writer

(pp. 53-54)

Essentially, the choices made by the journalist in regards to the various elements within micro- level structure, as described just above, organizes the meaning of a sentence. The decisions made in relation to the macro-level structure (the superstructure) organize the meaning of the text as a whole (Van Dijk, 1988, pp. 14-15). These aspects allow the researcher to determine “where and how ideologies preferably manifest themselves in news reports” (Van Dijk, 2008, p. 195)

4.2.5 Macrorules and discourse topics Finally, I want to bring up macrorules and discourse topics. Van Dijk theorized three macrorules as an analytical tool for the researcher to capture the essence of a given text, which he defined as a discourse topic (Van Dijk, 1977, pp. 105-106). The theoretician devised these terms to get rid of all the unnecessary information that is seen in articles, and get to the very core of the article, whereby expressions of ideology can be brought to light and critically interpreted (Van Dijk, 1988, p. 32).

The three rules are:

• Generalization: Refers to summing up a description of a phenomenon, e.g. “the child was kicking a ball against the wall”, which could be generalized to “the child was playing”. • Deletion: Refers to less vital information that can be omitted without losing the central information in a text, e.g. if one was to describe a meeting between Angela Merkel and Barack Obama, then the time and place would not be considered vital as the actual meeting between the two. • Construction: Summarizes the two first rules to a “global act”, i.e. a more simple term to replace a series of acts, e.g. “The waiter at the restaurant took plates, cutlery and glasses out of the cabinet, carried them to the table, and started putting the plates, cutlery and glasses on the table” where it would be sufficient to merely say “the waiter was setting the table”, without losing the most central information.

4.2.6 Critique In my view, Teun Van Dijk’s CDA provides a framework from which I can examine how the Kremlin meddlers communicate, as well as the discourse surrounding the meddlers from the perspective of the media. On one hand, something that could be perceived as a weakness in the theory, is in giving the researcher tangible theoretical terms from which to structure an analysis from. In his theory, Van Dijk brings forth many useful terms for reflecting on notions such as ideology, power in society, how that affects discourse, and how discourse affects society, particularly in the context of journalistic material. However, in terms of providing something akin to a formula to analyze discourse, outside of news articles, the researcher is very much left to his/her own devices.

On the other hand, this is not necessarily a weakness of the theory, as it permits the researcher a substantial amount of freedom in structuring and conducting one’s critical analysis, which is of course very much the intention of a critical theory of discourse. If Van Dijk had proposed a strict procedure for conducting any type of discourse analysis, researchers might find themselves unable to navigate outside those structures and thus remain critical and independent. Indeed, something that could be viewed both positively and negatively is Critical Discourse Analysis’ explicit focus on critically scrutinizing journalistic material, which makes the theory very relevant and applicable on such material. However, that does also make the theory less applicable in other areas, e.g. in the context tweets. As I see it in the context of my thesis, the strengths of Van Dijk’s theory are evident in relation to identifying and critically

35 interpreting ideology and the exercise of power on the level of discourse (re)production, how it relates to society, and on the micro-level in the (re)production of discourse, specifically in instances of written discourse. To achieve this critical understanding of discourse (re)production, the theoretician, as I explained in the beginning of the section also proposes that the researcher conducts a textual analysis of the text (Van Dijk, 2008, pp. 3-4).

4.2.7 Application I will be using Van Dijk’s theory to analyze Twitter posts made by the Kremlin meddlers, for the purpose of examining how they sought to communicate on the topics of the two major political events, how ideologies were expressed in this communication, and its function. I will also examine the discourse surrounding the Kremlin Meddlers in the British and U.S. media, specifically in terms how the Meddlers were portrayed – here I will apply theoretical terms presented throughout this chapter, when salient, and follow Van Dijk’s three macrorules, to summarize the most central parts of the article in order to arrive at the discourse topic. The elements within the microstructure and the superstructure, as detailed on page 32-33, is the guiding framework for identifying and analyzing the primary thematic structures from the articles.

Because there are such vast differences between the two genres, i.e. the news articles and the tweets - the two analyses cannot be entirely identical either. News articles obviously have their own rigid traditions and norms, which Van Dijk has spent decades examining and building a framework to critically scrutinize. However, in this perspective, we must also consider the tweets a genre of its own. In practice, it means that some of the tools Van Dijk suggests the researcher to apply in order to find the most central aspects of news articles, do not apply to the tweets. Thus, while Van Dijk’s proposed analytical tools, will be applied on the articles, the tweets cannot be examined in the exact same way, seeing as the genres are simply too different. If one was to briefly try to relate those analytical tools to the tweets, one could argue that as tweets can convey very little in comparison to an article, simply due to the platform’s intended restrictions. Moreover, in that perspective the contents of a tweet to exhibit all elements of the superstructure, and that the text in and of itself represents the discourse topic. Another area where the difference between the two genres will inevitably have an effect on the analysis is in relation to the theoretical terms from Critical Discourse Analysis that relate solely to the symbolic elite, and unique properties of the news media. These theoretical terms will have very little relevance for the analysis of the meddlers’ communication, as the meddlers

36 cannot be regarded as the symbolic elite, and as Twitter is essentially an open platform, where anyone with an account can broadcast their messages far and wide, in stark contrast to rigidness of the news media. What that said, however, I would still argue that some of Van Dijk’s theoretical terms are still useful in critically scrutinizing the meddlers’ communication. One final note that distinguishes the tweets from the news articles, is the fact that at least some of the primary motives behind the tweets are known to us, based on what was discussed in the introduction and background chapters, therefore the analysis will focus on how these motives were realized in their communication.

5. Methodology

Within the wider field of social sciences, the thesis follows a somewhat standard methodology of problematizing a phenomenon, seeking to get a deep and detailed understanding of it through qualitative methodology (Jensen, 2012). In certain aspects, the methodology I employed in my thesis, differs a bit from the methodological choices made by the majority of the scholars in the body of literature I explored in the literature review. A large portion of the scholars in the literature utilized semi-structured interviews to research definitions of trolling, motivations behind trolling and reactions to trolling. A small number of scholars specifically employed a methodology to analyze the discursive acts involved in examining ideological trolling. Other scholars took a quantitative angle on trolling, Kremlin meddlers and fake news, opting for larger amounts of empirical data to make broader predictions and conclusions about the topics at hand. I opted for a qualitative methodological focus because I am interested in the deep and detailed examination of the Kremlin meddlers’ discursive acts, how the news sites portrayed the meddlers and the role of ideology in the (re)production of discourse in both contexts. This, I would argue, would not be feasible to determine using a quantitatively-centered research focus, which would have needed an entirely different approach both in terms of the research questions, but also the theoretical and methodological choices I have made in this thesis. Finally, I would argue there is an inherent logic related to the choices I made to study the central phenomena of this thesis. This logic presents itself in the interconnectedness between central components of the thesis, i.e. the research questions, theoretical framework, research design, data and the methodology, all complementing each other for a qualitatively focused thesis, thus achieving what Morse & Richards, define as “methodological congruence” to obtain in-depth and critical knowledge of the topics at hand, which is especially relevant when it comes to discourse analysis (2002, pp. 30-34).

5.1 Collection of empirical data 5.1.1 The Kremlin meddlers’ tweets I collected 62 tweets from 14 different accounts stemming from the IRA. All tweets were gathered between November 1, 2017 and April 16, 2018. As the tweets are no longer available online, the tweets were all collected from either internet archive functionalities, or news articles containing screenshots or quotes from the meddlers’ accounts. This will all be explained in greater detail below.

In their investigation of The Internet Research Agency’s alleged meddling in the U.S. presidential election of 2016 and the Brexit referendum the same year, the U.S. congress released a list of 2,752 Twitter accounts, who were identified and subsequently suspended by Twitter after it was discovered the accounts stemmed from The Internet Research Agency (House Intelligence Committee, 2017). It is important to note, that these accounts were all, according to Twitter, human-operated accounts, and not amongst the automatized bot-accounts that have also been traced back to the IRA (Rocheleau, 2017).

What this means in relation to my thesis is that tweets that were confirmed by Twitter of being the product of the Kremlin meddlers’ actions, no longer exist online via the social media platform, which turned out to be quite an obstacle. However, I was able to recover a small portion of the posts through screenshots which had been disseminated via online news outlets and other tweets, which were available via internet archive functionalities such as www.archive.org. I went through all the articles I detailed in Table 1, seeking to find if they had included screenshots of tweets, or quoted them. In cases where screenshots were available in the article, it was quite simple as I could just use that screenshot. However in cases where there was only a text quotation of the comment and user name, I would cross-check them with the document released from the U.S. congress, containing the 2,752 account names of the suspended Kremlin accounts (House Intelligence Committee, 2017), a list containing links to the Kremlin accounts through the internet archive function (Internet Archive, 2017), and finally a database from NBC News, containing over 200,000 tweets posted by the suspended accounts (NBC News, 2018). The total number of tweets I was able to recover accumulated to 62, derived from 14 different accounts. In my analysis, I will include the name of the article, which newspaper it stems from and the date on which the tweet was posted if available, under each Twitter account. If the tweets were not derived from a newspaper that means I found them directly through the internet archive (Internet Archive, 2017). The meddlers’ Twitter accounts

I derived from the internet archives accounts are included in the list of accounts in Appendix 2.

Despite the somewhat bad luck of the tweets being deleted online I deemed that it served as a natural scope in the sense that it is an exhaustive examination of the 2,752 tweets, and will remain as such into the foreseeable future, unless the Twitter decides to release the tweets at a later date - thus I also consider the scope adequate in the context of my thesis. To briefly clarify; I call my analysis of the tweets an exhaustive examination of the Kremlin meddlers’ tweets, in the sense that the tweets included in my thesis make up all that remains of the meddlers’ original tweets online. Some additional conditions I decided on for these tweets in order to assure their salience for my thesis: I narrowed the scope by making it a requirement for them to be on the topic of either Brexit, or the American election of 2016. I decided that the tweets did not need to mention the election or referendum vote directly, but that they had to be politically related in some manner. Thus, the condition for me to include a tweet was that it had to be on the topic of a political issue in the U.K. or the U.S., with a national focus (i.e. not strictly local issues for a given city or county/region). The tweet also had to have been posted the same year leading up to the two political events, i.e. before June 23, 2016 in relation to the Brexit referendum vote, and before November 8, 2016 in relation to the presidential election vote in the U.S.

5.1.2 Online news sites A total of 30 articles were gathered from traditional news outlets stemming from the U.S. and the U.K. Three articles were gathered from each of the ten different news outlets I selected for my thesis. Five of those news outlets were from the U.S. and five were from the U.K. All articles were collected between September 6, 2017, until April 16, 2018. This section will detail the empirical data collection pertaining to the news outlets.

In order to illustrate a more balanced representation of the media discourse, I opted for selecting two news sites that are traditionally considered right-wing, and two that are traditionally considered left-wing. This was done respectively for both the U.S. and the U.K, accumulating for a total of eight different news outlets. In addition, whilst the notion of neutrality and objectivity are touchy subjects, and rightfully so, within news media (and academia in general) I decided to include two news outlets that are commonly considered to be closest to center on the political scale. Thus I regard those as the closest instances I will get of a nonpartisan and neutral coverage of the Kremlin meddlers. One being The Independent for the U.K., and the other being USA Today. I based this ideological spectrum on two surveys done in the U.S. and the U.K. respectively. The first, conducted by Pew Research Center, examined how trustworthy American citizens find different news outlets based on the person’s own political values. The survey had 10,000 respondents (Pew Research Center, 2014). The second, is a similar survey, conducted in the U.K. asking the 2040 participants to answer how they would describe major news outlets from the U.K. and U.S. using either Left, Right, or Center to categorize them (YouGov, 2017). The survey results are illustrated below, and on the subsequent page.

Figure 1 - Survey results: Trustworthiness41 of news outlets based on personal political views (Pew Research Center, 2014)

Figure 2 - Survey results: Describe each newspaper using Left, Right or Centre. (YouGov, 2017) Two of the news sites I chose to analyze are not found in either of the survey results above, these being: The New York Post, and The Chicago Tribune. I decided to interpret both of these news outlets as leaning to the right of center on the ideological spectrum. I base this categorization on the fact that both of the news outlets had made endorsements to the Republican Party in both the 2012 and 2016 U.S. presidential elections (Boston University Libraries, 2018). Therefore, I regard those endorsements to be indicative of a center-right bias, and sufficient for substantiating my claim.

I want to emphasize that my interpretation and usage of news outlet’s leanings on the ideological spectrum in my analysis, based on the survey data and endorsements made to political parties does not imply that I, in any way, regard these classifications as set in stone and applicable in all instances and examples of journalistic material produced by the news outlets. Nor do I believe the news outlets’ position on the political spectrum should be considered identical in the U.K. and the U.S. It is important to remember these are two different countries with different political contexts and processes, though that is not to say that there might not be similarities between the two. Ultimately, I find that the data on ideological leanings are useful categorizations which will aid me in my analysis of the articles, and eventually in drawing conclusions e.g. about whether or not there are noticeable differences in the news outlets’ portrayal of the Kremlin meddlers.

In the context of my thesis I deemed it important to distinguish between the different types of news outlets, i.e. outlets that are typically considered broadsheet, and outlets that are normally considered tabloid newspapers. An aspect I also deemed important, was that the news outlets had a strong online presence. I went by the assumption that if the Kremlin meddlers sought to broadcast their agenda to as wide an audience as possible, they would seek to break through to

42 the most popular news sites online. Thus, the news sites I chose (found in Table 1), are principally the most visited news sites online for each of the two countries. I used data from the National Readership Surveys (Statista, 2016) for the news outlets based in the U.K. For the U.S. the data stems from the Alliance for Audited Media (AAM, 2013). Finally, what I regard to be the most crucial decision I made in relation to choosing the news sites, was that no matter which news outlets I chose had to be balanced in terms of representing the ideological spectrum evenly while also having a balanced representation of tabloid and broadsheet news outlets. I made all these choices so that I, in my thesis, can remain not only as unbiased and impartial as possible, but also present as many different perspectives on the topic as possible.

I decided to quantify the number of times articles had been published by each news outlet on the topic of the Kremlin meddlers. These numbers can be found in Table 1 on the next page. I decided to collect these articles from September 6, 2017 when speculations began once more about the Kremlin meddlers and social media platforms being used intentionally in the attempt to spread fake news to the masses. I write “once more” as articles pertaining to such activities, e.g. by the meddlers had also been published between 2014 and 2016 (Sindelar, 2014; Walker, 2015; Benedictus, 2016). I ended my data collection on April 16, 2018. During the process of finding these articles, I discovered that some of these news outlets published a significant number of articles from international news agencies such as Reuters, Associated Press and AFP. I decided to omit these articles from my analysis as I deemed they would not appropriately reflect the intricacies involved in writing and editing the journalistic material of the original news outlet I decided to focus on and would instead reflect the values of Reuters and Associated Press or AFP, which I am not interested in scrutinizing. If I had chosen to include these publications from external news agencies, the numbers in the articles would, in some cases, be significantly different from how they appear now. To exemplify, The Chicago Tribune had a total of three articles they themselves had written and published, whilst if I had counted the external articles, that number would amount to a total of 27 articles. This might also be attributed to the newspaper being smaller in scale compared to other news sites I have used. On one hand, one could perhaps argue that the news site chooses to publish the articles from the external news bureaus, and that it therefore reflects the news sites values and views. However, on the other hand, it has been the case that news outlets buy “news packages” and in some form might be contractually bound to publish a certain amount of articles, annually or monthly, from these external news agencies (Czarniawska, 2011, pp. 43-44). Thus, I would

43 argue the lines become too blurry in terms of why a news outlet chooses to publish certain external articles, hence why I omitted them.

No. of Articles, within the News outlet and type Country Visitors data-collection period, on the “Kremlin Trolls” Right-leaning

The Daily Telegraph (Broadsheet) U.K. 7,3 million (monthly) 14

The Daily Mail (Tabloid) U.K. 11,8 million (monthly) 15

Chicago Tribune (Broadsheet) U.S. 414 thousand (daily) 3

The New York Post (Tabloid) U.S. 500 thousand (daily) 15

Left-leaning

The Guardian (Broadsheet) U.K. 7,6 million (monthly) 30

The Daily Mirror (Tabloid) U.K. 4,9 million (monthly) 12

The New York Times (Broadsheet) U.S. 2 million (daily) 18

HuffPost (Tabloid) U.S. 21,9 million (monthly) 11

Center

The Independent (Broadsheet) U.K. 4,8 million (monthly) 9

USA Today (Broadsheet) U.S. 1,6 million (daily) 6

Total number of articles Right-leaning: 47 Total number of articles Left-leaning: 71

Table 1 - List of news outlets, ideological leaning and number of articles 44

The table on the previous page shows the number of visitors in monthly numbers for the U.K., and daily numbers for the U.S. It was not possible to find publicly available numbers on the monthly visitors for the U.S. newspapers without having to pay a fee, with the exception being The Huffington Post. The data for The Huffington Post’s monthly visitors was available on Statista (2017).

I had a few considerations in deciding on which news articles to analyze. I selected the articles based on a few different criteria. First and foremost, they had to be on the topic of the Kremlin trolls, though not necessarily with that in included in the headline. Secondly, it had to be in the context of either the U.S. presidential election of 2016, or in relation to the Brexit referendum the same year. Upon having decided which news outlets I wanted to focus on, I found the articles by visiting the websites of the news outlets using the search function or by searching through the archive on each website, specifically searching for the “Kremlin trolls”. As the total number of articles on the topic of the trolls would prove to be too data for me to analyze, I opted for analyzing thirty articles in total, i.e. three articles from each of the news outlets I chose as seen in Table 1. These articles were chosen on a somewhat simple set of criteria, namely by choosing the top three articles with the most mentions of the so-called Kremlin trolls, by searching through them for the word “Troll”. Simple it may be; however I contend that it minimalizes any personal bias I might have for selecting a specific article over another. Based on this criteria of selection I would argue they have been transparently selected and collected based on the occurrence of a highly relevant term. To remain as transparent as possible in my research, I will include all the articles for each news outlet, in Appendix 1.

I deemed that three articles from each newspaper would prove adequate in revealing themes I can examine, and thus achieve what I set out to do, i.e. critically examine traditional news outlets’ portrayal of the Kremlin meddlers, and analyze the function of the ideologies expressed in that material from one end of the of the political spectrum to the other, in the context of two countries. Because my thesis is informed by a qualitative research approach, I do not aim for representativeness, nor do I claim the analysis of three news articles per news outlet would be representative of the news outlets’ coverage on the topic. However, it is important to emphasize that in a qualitative-centered study, contrasting a quantitative-centered research design, the researcher can rely on comparatively smaller data samples because of the inherent focus on data that is “detailed and the techniques designed to discover meaning through fine attention to the content of texts” (Richards, 2015, p. 25). Thus, I argue that within the context of my thesis and its purpose, the 30 articles are sufficient in answering the research question.

To ensure a more pertinent analysis of the articles, I decided to make use of qualitative coding to identify patterns and themes from the empirical data. The term “coding” refers to the social scientific method whereby the researcher assigns meaning to words or passages in a given set of data for the purpose of capturing the most salient parts of, in this case, journalistic material on the topic of the Kremlin meddlers (Saldaña, 2009, p. 3). All articles were coded twice, to better ensure that the categories were relevant in relation to my theory of choice, my research questions and that they were as relevant as possible.

With inspiration from Saldaña’s coding manual (Ibid.) and from the basis of CDA’s microstructures and superstructures I devised a coding table (Appendix 2.5) and developed eight categories from which I would assess ideological expressions in the article, these were:

• Headline (super) • Lead (super) • Us vs. them (micro) • Rhetoric (micro) • Lexical style (micro) • Grammar (micro) • Commentary (super) • Conclusions/evaluations (super)

The super in parenthesis, refers to elements the elements to Van Dijk’s superstructure, i.e. elements that organize the meaning of a text as a whole. The micro refers to textual elements, which organize the meaning of a sentence. Based on these categories, which I developed to focus on, and better identify the points that were most likely to bring a text’s ideology to light, or as Saldaña states “symbolically assigns a summative, salient, essence-capturing, and/or evocative attribute” (Ibid., p. 3) in relation to data, I assessed the contents of the article to aid me in finding themes to analyze from the empirical data, which I expect, will ultimately assist me in structuring an analysis, based on the articles’ core themes.

5.2 Analytical approach

In this section I will specify how I will conduct my analysis. This section will simultaneously function as a structural overview and breakdown of my analysis chapter, while clarifying my method of data analysis at the same time. The analysis chapter will be split into two main parts, with each part containing its own sub conclusion at the end. The purpose of doing so, is that it creates an overview in two ways; one is in clarifying the concrete answers to my research questions, and the second is making it easier for you, the reader, to read and make sense of. Moreover, the methods employed in the thesis will primarily be qualitative, whereby I as an interpretive subject seek to understand, attain a deep and detailed knowledge and make sense of discursive acts, stemming from U.S. and British news outlets, and the Kremlin meddlers (Jensen, 2012). To clarify my role as a researcher and expound on the notion of an interpretive subject; I do not, and cannot claim to be a blank canvas, so to speak, with no preconceptions or prejudice in relation to the various phenomena I explore in this thesis. Instead, I acknowledge that I as a subject unavoidably have inherent biases, but that in my role as a researcher should strive to eliminate these in my writings.

I will conduct textual analysis as put forward by Van Dijk, and interpret the empirical data, which consists of the Kremlin meddlers’ tweets, and the articles from the news sites. The interpretation will be done from a critical perspective, through applying Teun van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis, and relevant theoretical terms from the theory. At a textual level (or the micro-level) this involves critically scrutinizing the textual elements, so the exercise of power (through ideological expressions) can be interpreted, both at the level of the decisions made in relation to the discourse (re)production, but also the wider societal impact. These textual elements are concretely: On sentence-level with aspects such as usage of the active or passive voice, syntax errors, rhetorical means (metaphors, repetition, persuasion, hyperbole, similes), but also on a word-level, examining e.g., modality, vocabulary, connotation/denotation, adjective-use, personal pronouns, use of capitalization and quotation marks (Van Dijk, 2006). As proposed by Van Dijk, the central themes from the news articles will be found through the analytical tools, the macrorules, and discourse topics, which in combination will assist me in finding the most essential themes of the articles. The articles are also analyzed from the basis of the superstructures (with the three categories) which along with theoretical terms will allow me to derive the main ideologies present in the journalistic material. Finally, to reiterate, in my use of Critical Discourse Analysis, the relation between language

47 use, how social power is exercised, and the interrelatedness of discourse, ideology and society, is what is of the primary importance.

In the first part of my analysis, I will examine the Twitter posts by the Kremlin meddlers, to examine what characterizes the communication, how ideologies were expressed in this communication, and what its functions were using CDA. Thus, I will be answering my first research question “What characterizes the communication of the Kremlin meddlers in their Twitter profiles?” For each of the tweets I analyze, I will include screenshots of the Twitter account, containing the respective posts.

In the second part of the analysis I will analyze the thirty articles, from the news sites indicated in Table 1. My primary focus is to examine how ideology is used to portray the Kremlin meddlers in the British and U.S. news media. For the purpose of making the analysis more concise and pertinent, I have provided a very brief summary of the respective articles’ contents in Appendix 1.5. I will include the headline and the accompanying lead (if there is a lead) to each article I am analyzing in the same appendix. I will also, include each article in the appendices. The Daily Telegraph will be titled Appendix 3 and the articles within the appendix will be referred to as (Appendix 3, a1/2/3), the second “a” indicating which of the articles I will be referring to. This part of the analysis will be structured via sub-sections of the main discourses I identified through coding the articles, where the primary focal point is on examining ideology in the news outlets’ portrayal of the Kremlin meddlers, as well as its function. I will conclude this part of the analysis with a sub conclusion as well. In this part I will have answered my second research question “How is ideology (re)produced through discourse in the British and U.S. news media’s portrayal of the Kremlin meddlers?”

As I explained in the purpose, the two research questions will complement each other in terms of their joint purpose, i.e. to critically examine and thus obtain the deep and detailed knowledge of a discursive struggle to shape the public’s perception in a certain way. Here, ideology will undoubtedly play a central role as it organizes fundamental beliefs across social groups. 5.3 Ethics

In my pursuit to remain ethical, I considered several steps. I contemplated on anonymizing the usernames of the commenters by blacking them out in the comment section. This concern primarily stemmed from the fact that if one was to click on a commenter’s username; one would be able to see the comment and post history of the user in question. So, if one was to look through the entire history of the user, or search the internet for the username, it is not 48 completely unlikely that the username can be tied to some sort of personal data, which in turn could potentially contain personal or other types of sensitive information. One could further argue that there are risks involved with the user posting potentially lewd comments, because of a sense of perceived anonymity and or pseudo-anonymity tied to one’s online identity (White, 2014, p. 42), to a person’s private life, which could have consequences in real life. As I established in the literature review, while scholars are not in total agreement whether anonymity actually impacts trolling and motivations to troll, most of the scholars I explored in my thesis argued that it did (Robertson, 2015; Aro, 2016; Zelenkauskaite & Niezgoda, 2017; Lumsden & Morgan, 2017), while only one study found that anonymity made no real impact on such behavior online (Hutchens, et al., 2014).

I ultimately decided not to anonymize the comments, because I deemed the risk of the users having their personal identity found, based on my thesis very low. I based this risk assessment on the anonymity and pseudo-anonymity considerations I briefly touched on just above and in discussed in more detail in the literature review. case, I would have taken some of these measures to anonymize the usernames. In the context of the article I gathered from the online news sites, I wanted to, as I previously stated, to present as unbiased a perspective as possible on the so-called Kremlin trolls; hence I chose articles representing a balanced part of the ideological spectrum.

For the coding of the articles I acknowledge the fact that it is, to some degree, based on subjective interpretation that it is very likely that different people would arrive at different interpretation of the given empirical data as there are no definitive conclusions or truths within the type of research I am doing in this thesis.

6. Analysis

6.1 The Kremlin meddlers’ Twitter communication

As stated in the methodology, I identified 62 tweets from 14 different accounts that were traced back to the IRA as found in the U.S. Congress investigation of Russian interference (House Intelligence Committee, 2017). In the process of finding these Twitter accounts and assessing what was being communicated and how, it quickly became clear that it would be possible to distinguish between two different types of accounts. The first type, consists of six different Twitter accounts, that all to a lesser or greater extent assume pseudonyms, specifically impersonating U.S. or British nationals, purporting to be actual citizens of those nations. I say lesser or greater in that three of these accounts use realistic full names (i.e. first names together with surnames), whereas the other three use rather arbitrary aliases, though still purporting to be individuals. The other type, consisting of eight accounts, differ in that they pretended to be, and acted as if they were legitimate news outlets. In the section below, I will analyze those Twitter accounts hiding under the guise of pseudonyms, and in the subsequent section I will analyze the second type.

6.1.1 The voices of “citizens” One of the accounts the Kremlin meddlers operated under the alias “Pamela Moore”. The Twitter account took the guise of a woman from the state of Texas in the U.S. The profile description characterizes Pamela Moore as a “Southern. Conservative. Pro God. Anti Racism”, which seems to be quite a toned-down description compared to the account’s tweets. The profile picture too would likely be interpreted as quite provocative, showing an image of a topless woman whose face is covered by what appears to be a half-niqab, holding the national flag of the United States.

Figure 3 – Data collected from internet archive and The New York Post – Article: “Russia helped discredit scandalous Trump news before election” - Tweets posted July 25, 2016 At first glance, it appears both tweets attempt to portray members of the Democratic Party, including other prominent public officials who during the time of the tweet served under President Barack Obama’s administration, in a negative light. The people pictured in the tweet on the left side are: Eric Holder, former Attorney General, and Susan Rice, National Security Advisor. And on the right: Loretta Lynch, Attorney General and James Comey, Director of the FBI. And in the middle, President Barack Obama. In the tweet Pamela Moore writes “Hey @CNN why aren’t you fast and furiously investigating these criminals? #LockThemAllUp” (Figure 3). Directly addressing the tweet to CNN using @, the Kremlin meddler asks the news channel to investigate people from the Obama administration, also demanding them to be locked up, using the hashtag.

In the second tweet Pamela writes “Just a fact: Hillary Clinton has killed more people than sharks in the past 25 years”. The text is a quote from another website, which has been embedded in the tweet. In the article’s accompanying image, Hillary Clinton who at the time was on the campaigning to be the next president for the Democratic Party, is pictured next to a shark. Interestingly, contrasting the first tweet, which managed to get 22 comments, 96 re-tweets and 140 likes, no hashtag was used here. In spite of that the tweet was still fairly popular amongst the Twitter account’s followers, achieving 48 comments, 343 re-tweets and 512 likes (Figure 3). The degree to which Twitter users were drawn to interact with these tweets were significantly higher than what we have previously seen. From the stats of the Twitter account, it seems realistic to assume that the account was reasonably popular, and quite active. Seeing as the account managed to post 5657 tweets, and reached approximately 67,100 followers, since its creation in in November 2015 (Figure 3). In the communication from Pamela Moore an ideological stance is expressed which makes itself apparent in the focus on a hostile attitude taken towards Hillary Clinton and other members of the Democratic Party. This discourse is

heavily reminiscent of ideology expressed through discourse, which according to Van Dijk will typically “emphasize their own good deeds and properties and the bad ones of the outgroup, and mitigate or deny their own bad ones” (Van Dijk, 2006, p. 115). As such, Van Dijk claims that ideological polarization and clashes between different groups are almost inevitable in the (re)production of discourse. Because ideology is inherently a social phenomenon (Ibid.), one could make the argument that in all instances of discursive acts, ideologies are expressed. Whether or not they are expressed in a more explicit or an implicit manner, they will affect the cognition of individuals from different social groups, in widely different ways.

The next meddler account “Jenna Abrams” mirrors some of the ideological expressions present in the former account, especially in relation to discursive acts that could be interpreted as highly polarizing. Three of the tweets contain express a racist ideology, characterized by negative expressions toward ethnical minorities, likely seeking to influence the cognition of readers, with similar views

Figure 4 – Data collected from internet archive and The New York Post – Article: “Russia helped discredit scandalous Trump news before election” - Tweets posted September 9, 2016

This Twitter account similarly used a pseudonym to create the illusion that the views expressed, represent an actual person situated in the U.S. The profile picture depicts a young woman, likely in an attempt to re-affirm that this person in the image is supposed to represent the views

52 expressed in the tweets. The profile description hints at similar attempts of building a persona with a genuine interest in politics claiming “Politics is a circus of hypocrisy. I DO care” (Figure 4), also asking people to contact the employee behind the profile with “offers/ideas/questions” via direct messaging or email (Figure 4).

The first tweet consists of a controversial statement aimed at a racial minority in the U.S., stating: “I’m not racist I just don’t understand why Black people are always talking about being oppressed when they’re not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯” (Figure 4). I interpret the emoticon at the end, as a shrug, perhaps trying to convey a sense of bewilderment in relation to the statement made. From a critical perspective, one could interpret the statement as the (re)production and perpetuation of discourse characterized by racism and ethnic prejudice, cementing the dominance of marginalized groups in society.

The second tweet, features Hillary Clinton standing next to two men, seemingly of Middle Eastern descent, wearing Ghutrahs, with the accompanying text “#MoneyIsntImportantBut But” (Figure 4). One way to interpret this could be an attempt to convey the message that Hillary Clinton is “in the pockets” so to speak, of wealthy individuals, and that her politics might be influenced, and otherwise tainted by these ties. Again, we can draw multiple commonalities between this Twitter account, and the previous one. Firstly, in their (re)production of discourse, they both represent views, critical towards organization of CNN and the people in the picture, who based on their roles during President Obama’s term, represented the ideological left in the U.S. (Figure 3). Moreover, there is another reference to a popular culture phenomenon used in this tweet, specifically “fast and furiously” (Figure 3), which is likely meant to be a reference to the series of American action movies, The Fast and the Furious. From this, we can infer that both this Twitter account, and the previous one, operate within a similar discourse that is aimed at the same audience. And once again we see an account belonging to the Kremlin meddlers, which has a significant number of followers, in comparison to the Twitter average which, as I mentioned previously, is 707 (Kickfactory, 2016). In comparing the reach of this account to Pamela Moore who had 5657 tweets, 67,100 followers and 714 likes (Figure 3), we also see a high number of followers 57,700. However, the number of tweets posted from this account, 19,100, and the amount of likes it has received, 8091, are both higher by a considerable degree than that of the Pamela Moore account.

Figure 5 – Data collected from The New York Times (U.K. site) – Article: “Twitter warrior David Jones is denounced as Russian-based ‘Kremlin stooge’” - Tweets posted June 22, 2016, January 21, 2016, May 17

Of the accounts I identified in this analysis, this is the largest and most popular of the Kremlin meddlers’ Twitter accounts in all respects, with 136,000 tweets, 102,000 followers and 13,500 likes. The account was clearly communicating on a very regular basis, and (re)producing discourse to a significant number of followers. The Twitter accounts presents itself as “David Jones”, a U.K. citizen who is, suffice to say, hyper-critical of the U.K. government based on its description and tweets. The description reads “UK government have abandoned Brits. We need to exit EU, ECHR, stop all immigration + look after British people. Like UKIP, all my views. I follow back” (Figure 5).

Again, we see a continuation of the pro right-of-center discourse, hence right-wing ideology. This is especially seen in regards two regards. Firstly, that David Jones wrote favorably about UKIP, which is typically regarded as far right-wing (YouGov, 2014). And secondly, at the time of the of the Brexit referendum the U.K. had a Conservative government with David Cameron as prime minister, and as the Conservatives are traditionally considered right-wing (YouGov, 2014), it seems that that Government policies were not extreme enough for David Jones. Not only is David Jones in favor of isolationism in the form of withdrawing from the European Union, the meddler’s account also wants the U.K. to pull out of “ECHR” (Figure 5), an abbreviation of the European Convention on Human Rights. In the first tweet, distrust to the U.K. government is also highly emphasized by the account, suggesting the U.K. electorate to bring pens, instead of pencils so their vote cannot be deleted or altered (Figure 5). What is more, the U.K. should, according to the account also, stop all immigration and “look after British people” (figure 5). Thus, we also see a continuation of dominance in the form of racist ideology, indicative of the racist and prejudicial views toward immigrants and minority groups,

and of being highly isolationist, wanting to block the immigrants from entering the country and pulling out of the European Union “EU want to force the UK to take 90,000 immigrants a year! Get us out the EU now”, also linking to a right-aligned newspaper The Daily Mail (Figure 5). This isolationist discourse is also seen in the third tweet. While the stats of the profiles are the highest we have seen thus far, the amount of interactivity achieved for the individual tweets are not much higher than what we saw in e.g. Jenna Abram’s tweet about not understanding why “Blacks” feel oppressed, reaching 61 retweets and 141 likes (Figure 5). And significantly less than Pamela Moore’s tweet about Hillary Clinton having killed more people than sharks in the last 25 years which reached 48 comments, 343 re-tweets and 512 likes.

Figure 6 – Data collected from The New York Post – Article: “Russia helped discredit scandalous Trump news before election” - Tweets posted July 16 & 12

The next Kremlin meddler Twitter account defines itself as a “Political junkie in action” (Figure 6), though makes no indication as to which political views it dedicates itself to. The tweets, however, immediately clear up any such ponderings one might have had. The most recent tweet takes a clear ideological stance in the form of the expression “You’ve gone full- left. Never go full left! #LiberalLogic” (Figure 6), which is very reminiscent of dialogue from the American movie Tropic Thunder, and thus quite likely a reference to it, wherein the quote is “You went full retard man, never go full retard” (Rotten Tomatoes, 2008). Thus, we see the Kremlin meddlers making references to American pop-culture phenomena adding a political twist to it, which is likely done to garner support for the ideological right. Here, we also see what Van Dijk refers to in CDA, namely that ideology may be used by individuals seeking to distance themselves from a contrasting ideology, while garnering support from the so-called in-group, i.e. people adhering to the same ideological standpoint (Van Dijk, 2006). It is not the cultural phenomenon in itself that expresses any ideological standpoint, but rather the fact that the Kremlin meddler uses the cultural reference in an ideological context, likely to appeal to

55 its followers and influence their cognition by further cementing its position as an actual “American”.

In the second tweet, the meddler identifies as a white male, and facetiously remarks and criticizes the news media for him being unable to “enjoy my white male privileges when every newspaper calls me a peace [sic] of garbage? #WhiteWednesdays” (Figure 6). Again, we see pro-ideological right discourse being (re)produced in the communication, including a racially focused, and possibly provoking hashtag in the form of #WhiteWednesdays. Reminiscent of what some scholars in the field also pointed to in the literature review, that trolls seek to inflame and provoke through their actions (Bishop, 2014; Cheng, et al., 2017; Cook, et al., 2017; Tsantarliotis, et al., 2017; Sanfillipo, et al., 2018).

Once again we see the Twitter account utilizing the hashtag function to disseminate the tweet to a broader audience. Though neither of the two tweets gained any significant support from Twitter users or its followers. The first tweet had one comment, one re-tweet and two likes, whereas the second got none at all (Figure 6). Again these numbers are extremely low relative to its 11,000 followers (Figure 6). However, it must be emphasized that it is clear that despite its relatively low number of 90 tweets, it has gained 941 likes in total (Figure 7). Thus the 11,000 followers and the 941 likes the account has achieved, proves it has accomplished some level of support in its communication characterized, at least in these two tweets, by an appeal to the ideological right.

The account “Jihadist Wife” differs from the ones we have seen thus far in that the account does not take the guise of a pseudonym as the previous ones did, and even calls itself a “satirical account” (Figure 7). Jihadist Wife continues with the previously seen discursive acts of being hyper-critical toward Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, implying they are turning the U.S. into some sort of Muslim ruled nation. It is even implied that Barack Obama’s visit to England caused the U.K. to leave the EU in the referendum vote, and that the Remain campaign was in some way rigged (Figure 7).

FigureFigure 77 –– DataData collectedcollected fromfrom internetinternet archivearchive -- TweetsTweets postedposted JuneJune 2525 && 2929 andand JulyJuly 44 && JulyJuly 88

The ideologies expressed in the discursive acts of Jihadist Wife, are quite reminiscent of what we have seen thus far. As seen in the tweets, the account is extremely critical of representatives of the left-of-center, and the “Remain” campaign. What is perhaps a bit less explicitly conveyed in the tweets, is the notion that Islam equals an undemocratic development in both the U.S. and the U.K. Therefore a rather simplistic, perhaps isolationist, worldview is constructed, whereby two cultures cannot co-exist, influencing the cognition, through doomsday rhetoric.

Figure 8 – Data collected from internet archive and The Guardian – Article: “Russian ‘troll army’ tweets sited more than 80 times in UK media” - Tweets posted May 6, May 19 June 14 & September 7 Like the Twitter accounts concentrated at the influencing the American presidential election, this account (re)produces a similar discourse of favoring right-leaning ideology, e.g. being dismissive and negatively imposed toward minority races and religions, like the Jenna Abrams account was towards “Blacks” (Figure 8). And hyper-critical, in some cases to quite ridiculous

57 extents of left-leaning politics, parties and representatives, like seen from all the previous accounts. This tendency in terms of favoring right-leaning politics is present in all Tennessee GOP’s tweets.

Figure 8 continued

In the first tweet, the meddler comments “All Muslims of UK praying to #remain.. #Leave will mean disaster for them #Brexit #EURef” (Figure 8). Specifically taking a negative stance to Muslims, suggesting, that something disastrous will happen to Muslims if the U.K. electorate decides to leave the European Union. The second tweet “Leave’ overperforms ‘Remain’! Winston Churchill would be proud of you! #EURef: #Brexit…” (Figure 8) is another example of a tweet showing support to the ideological right, making references to a well-known cultural figure of that nation, appealing to a sense of nationalism, in the shape of Winston Churchill,

58 which in reality has little relevance in relation to a Brexit referendum in 2016. The final tweet “Is London done? Or they have [sic] chance? #BanIslam #Brexit” (Figure 8), continues in line with the anti-minority and doomsday-rhetorical discourse as in the first tweet. In this tweet we also see some grammatical errors, specifically in the meddler omitting the transitive verb “do”, and the definite article “a”, which are needed in order for the sentence to achieve proper syntax. The account makes extensive use of hashtags #Remain, #Leave, #Brexit and #EURef that likely saw extensive use on Twitter in the weeks and days leading up to the referendum vote, thus increasing the likelihood that more people were exposed to these statements. Turning its attention to the U.S. presidential election, the meddler gives some heavy criticism to the news media and the Democratic Party. The bottom right tweet reads “Crooked Media can’t stop common sense! More life long Dems refuse to support Hillary Clinton! #DemExit”, with a picture attached of a man holding a sign stating, “Democrats For TRUMP We need a leader too!” (Figure 8). Implying that even supporters of the Democratic Party, dislike presidential candidate Hillary Clinton enough to vote for the opposition. This tweet was the account’s most popular tweet with 1400 retweets and 1700 likes.

6.1.2 The Kremlin “news outlets” I want to start the section by emphasizing that the Kremlin meddlers operating these accounts, thought it salient to assume the guise of news outlets via the platform, to accomplish what the IRA set out to do, i.e. disrupt western democratic processes, by means of discourse. What is inferable from that, perhaps rather obvious, statement is the fact that the IRA must have had a logic in doing so, which I believe is important to keep in mind while reading the analysis of these tweets. The majority of the meddler operated accounts we will see in this section express ideologies in a much less overt than the ones we saw in the previous section. Expressions of ideology here, are to a much higher extent inferable from what “news piece” is being referred to in the tweets. The first six Twitter accounts in this section, show no obvious personal or biased opinions in their writing, purely because all the discursive acts of those accounts all write as if they were the Twitter versions of legitimate news outlets.

Figure 9 – Data collected from internet archive - Tweets posted February 9 KansasCityDailyNews, reflects some the statements I made on the previous page. No obvious ideological biases are expressed in the text; however there are a few things that can be inferred from the two tweets. The most recent tweet claims a poll shows “Trump leads ahead of New Hampshire vote” (Figure 9), while the second reads “Clinton: ‘We’re going to take stock’ on campaign […] #politics” (Figure 9). The first tweet shows Donald Trump in a positive light, while it is implied that Clinton is going to “take stock”, which could be interpreted as evoking negative connotations in suggesting that the presidential candidate needs reevaluate their campaign, suggesting the campaign is not doing as well as the competitor’s campaign. Upon further research I found that the account likely referred to an actual article from a legitimate news source (Newton-Small, 2016), which adds an entirely new dimension in what could easily have been shrugged off as deceitful news; namely that legitimate news were also further disseminated by the meddlers while imitating an actual news outlet. Nevertheless, the contrast of positive news about Donald Trump, and arguably negative news about Hillary Clinton, is still interesting to note.

Figure 10 – Data collected from internet archive - Tweet posted April 15 Similar to the former accounts, Baltimore Online’s tweet also contains a link to a legitimate news site (NewsOne, 2016). This further proves that some of the meddlers, within this type, were not only disseminating news that had no grounds in reality. However, the news that was further disseminated again portrays the left-wing in what could be interpreted as a negative light. In this case one could argue the expressed ideology lies in the fact that the meddler further disseminated, critical news of the left-wing. Having only one tweet from this account makes it difficult to say one way or the other, though with the previous discursive acts in mind, and the fact that they were working under the circumstances, with the same aims in the same organization, it would likely not be a far-fetched assumption.

The two accounts, Cleveland Online and San Francisco Daily do not reflect any particular ideological bias in their tweets one way or the other on the ideological scale.

Figure 11 – Data collected from internet archive - Tweet posted February 8

Figure 12 – Data collected from internet archive - Tweets posted September 27 We know at least some of the IRA’s main motivations, i.e. to disrupt democratic processes in western countries, however it may seem difficult to deliberate what the possible benefits would be of communicating as Cleveland Online and San Francisco Daily did. The tweets convey information as if they themselves were news outlets with the unique access to knowledge about the presidential candidates. A way of viewing the purpose of these tweets, can be done through the lens of CDA’s cognition, in which the meddler constructs the social reality for the reader to interpret, in much the same way a traditional news outlet would do via Twitter. Assuming that some of the 13 thousand (Figure 11) or 16 thousand followers (Figure 12) are actual people, they would likely be none the wiser that the account was in fact operated by the IRA and consume the tweets as if they were legitimate pieces of news. While the tweets from these accounts were all in reference to actual news from real news sites, one could argue the consequences become clear immediately, if the trolls started fabricating news entirely.

Atlanta Online, similarly disseminates real news by simply (re)producing news from actual news sources. No explicit ideological biases are expressed, though the headline in the first tweet seems to reflect the first instance of a tweet that is not in favor of Trump. This could be an attempt at establishing what is communicated in the profile text, being a news channel for “Breaking news”; that news is being communicated regardless of which ideological standpoint it favors. And brings to light the same considerations as in the context of Cleveland Online and San Francisco Daily, except that this account did not simply write headlines in the broad text as they did, but rather by referring to the original articles from legitimate news sites, with the inclusion of pictures. Again, considering the function of the tweets through the lens of cognition, opens up for the consideration pertaining to the notion that the followers of the account consume legitimate news as long as that is what the meddlers are disseminating. However, if the meddler was to begin diverging from simply (re)producing actual news, then that might influence the reader to consume deceitful news, in the same manner they would the legitimate news (re)produced by the meddler.

Figure 13 – Data collected from internet archive - Tweets posted October 2

Figure 14 – Data collected from internet archive and The New York Post – Article: “Russia helped discredit scandalous Trump news before election” - Tweets posted May 3 & 5

Examining the profile description, there are some elements, that are worth taking note of. The description establishes the main purpose of the account; being a news source providing “original reporting and trusted news” (Figure 14). Firstly, the tweet almost directly contradicts the account’s aim to provide original and trusted news, because the tweet very likely refers to the Chicago Tribune article “Jock the vote: Donald Trump leverages athletes’ support”, published on the exact same date. On the topic of Donald Trump gaining support from prominent athletes on the election trail, fits well into the notion that the news media publishing material on a given topic simultaneously makes people perceive that as news, and newsworthy. Moreover, the hashtag “#politics” (Figure 14) is used, which means that the tweet will be visible to Twitter users browsing under that particular hashtag, thus increasing the likelihood that it will be seen by more users. Had the tweet not contained a hashtag, it would only be visible to Baton Rouge Voice’s followers. Though, in the case of this tweet, it is difficult to state that it communicates any sort of distinct opinion on anything that could garner support a certain ideological group, except possibly further disseminating support for Donald Trump.

The second to last Kremlin Twitter account “Missouri News” departs quite heavily from what we have previously seen in the “news outlet” Twitter profiles. Where the previous examples of “news outlets” have described their profiles as “breaking news” and news sources, and have (re)produced discourse to, more or less, fit the part (Figure 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14), the discourse remains anything but objective (Figure 15). The account (re)produces some tough criticism

toward Hillary Clinton, which is definitely not new (keeping the meddlers’ accounts from the previous section in mind), however the alternative, in this context, is not Donald Trump or the ideological right. Instead it is Bernie Sanders, who competed against Hillary Clinton as the Democrat’s nominee for the presidential candidacy (Wikipedia, 2018). During the time when these tweets were posted, Bernie Sanders was still in the running against Clinton to become the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, so it makes sense, in the context of the meddlers’ previous communication, that the heavy criticism directed towards Clinton would be attempted to discourage people from supporting her. At the time, it seems reasonable to assume that Hillary Clinton was the most likely of the two to beat Donald Trump.

Figure 15 – Data collected from internet archive - Tweets posted May 7, 10, 11, 14, 15

The final, and most popular of the “news outlet” accounts continues in the same vein as Missouri News. Pigeon Today describes itself as a much like a satirical news source,

64 characterizing itself as “America’s Weakest Primetime Lineup” with “must-see memes” (Figure 16). Pigeon Today departs from the majority of the “news outlets” we saw in this section not attempting to disguise itself as a legitimate news outlet. Quite the opposite in fact, the discourse is highly reminiscent of the “citizen voices” we saw in the previous section, taking a hard stance toward not only Hillary Clinton but also “Liberals”, Bernie Sanders and his supporters, laying out a clear ideological standpoint. Pigeon Today also shows support for Donald Trump, using personal pronouns, exclaiming “We the people want our country back!”, likely to create a sense of community for supporters of Donald Trump. Interestingly, the tweet featuring a picture of Hillary Clinton, was the most popular, achieving 52 retweets and 27 likes, compared to the 10 retweets and 16 likes of the Trump tweet, which seems to be a fitting conclusion to the meddlers’ recipe for success, critiquing Hillary Clinton.

Figure 16 – Data collected from internet archive - Tweets posted April 15

6.1.3 Sub conclusion Prior to this analysis, it might have been difficult to fully grasp and contextualize exactly what was being communicated by the Kremlin Meddlers. However, now that I have analyzed the tweets, there are several conclusions we can draw. It has become clear that all the accounts operating under the guise of pseudonyms in the majority of their tweets engage in the (re)production of deceitful news, primarily by further disseminating ideological discourse in favor of the ideological right, and discourse critical of supporters and representatives of the ideological left. In both cases, the meddlers often go to extreme extents of showing their support to the ideological right, by criticizing the ideological left. Respective examples of which, is David Jones implying that the British electorate should bring markers instead of pencils to avoid their votes being erased. Another example being Pamela Moore’s tweet about Hillary Clinton having killed more people than sharks. Across the board, the discursive acts of the meddlers are characterized by an explicit ideological foundation, highly critical of the ideological left. In cases where the meddlers are not spreading deceitful news, it appears that the first type seek to further strengthen and establish their online pseudonyms and fake personas through laying out their opinions on a given subject, which is similarly targeted at those who support the ideological right, perhaps so that when they do disseminate deceitful news, they likely appear more convincing to Twitter users. It is interesting to note that the meddlers, overall, did not seek to gain a following by focusing on posting positive things about Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and other right-wing affiliated organizations - there are a couple of examples of this in the tweets, however the vast majority of the meddlers sought for an arguably more aggressive approach to spread their agenda and gain support, namely by being extremely critical of the ideological left.

Overall the communication of the Kremlin meddlers operating under pseudonyms follows Van Dijk’s principles of ideological discourse closely. The communication is generally characterized by following a strategy of positive self-representation (also defined as boasting) i.e. emphasizing positive aspects, and vice-versa a negative representation of others (also defined as derogation) (Van Dijk, 2006, p. 126). Ideological polarization plays an important part in the discourse (re)production of the meddlers. If one was to assume that a Twitter user is definitely against the Hillary Clinton winning the presidential election, or against the U.K. staying in the European Union, then ideological polarization can lead those who might be moderately leaning toward the ideological right, to gradually change their views to a more extreme ideological expressions because the meddlers through continuous (re)production of

66 discourse make it seem to the given user, that such views, behaviors, and attitudes are “normal” and held by the supposedly normal American or British citizens who operate these accounts, thus legitimizing the discourse. One could indeed deliberate that is the exact function of the ideology expressed and the purpose in the meddlers’ (re)production of discourse, namely to set the context whereby such discourse is normalized and legitimized, making it seem that the extreme ideological standpoints expressed through discourse is normal which would likely only worsen and perpetuate the problem and sow discord, or alternatively exhaust online users into simply being tired out from sheer amount of tweets the meddlers manage to disseminate, which from the 14 Twitter accounts I examined numbered to a total of 261,144 tweets.

As for the Twitter accounts posing as news outlets, the majority of the accounts strictly tweeted without the inclusion of “personal” opinions, merely resorting to disseminate information from actual news outlets about the presidential election, often linking to external news sites. Apart from Missouri News (Figure 15) and Pigeon Today (Figure 16), there were no explicit ideological expressions critical of the ideological left, or in support of the ideological right – the accounts, at least in the tweets I identified for my thesis, had a presence much like a legitimate news outlet would on Twitter. It is difficult to deliberate of what the point of such behavior is, though a possibility could be that the accounts merely seek to attract a following first, and then slowly alter their communication to resemble a more familiar (re)production of discourse, similar to the one of the first type.

Two of the eight accounts, Missouri News and Pigeon Today included their “personal” opinions, which heavily resembled the discursive acts of meddlers operating under pseudonyms. As I alluded to in the introduction of the thesis – ideological expressions as these might be legitimized as a consequence of their continued (re)production through the establishment of a context where this is regarded as normal, which can have severe consequences for political debates online and even in real life. We can contemplate on several of such consequences. On one hand it might normalize and encourage such behavior from supporters of the ideology, further legitimizing and (re)producing the discourse. Social groups who are in disagreement with the way in which Pamela Moore discusses CNN and the Democratic Party, might retaliate with similar behavior towards the Republican Party or news outlets with a center-right bias, thus normalizing and legitimizing such behavior further.

Some of the Kremlin accounts, Cleveland Online, San Francisco Daily, Atlanta Online, and Baton Rouge Voice disseminated news stemming from real news outlets. All of these accounts

67 did so without references or links to those news sites (Figure 11, 12, 13, 14). Here, one can ponder the potential risks in that if the meddlers were to suddenly begin disseminating deceitful news to their thousands of followers. Assuming such tweets resemble those included in the empirical data of my thesis, the meddlers’ followers would already be used to reading tweets without sources or links to the news sites, therefore the deceitful news would likely be consumed in the exact same manner that “real” news would. In this perspective, thousands of Twitter users would potentially be consuming deceitful news, possibly with little regard in terms of source-criticism, with the caveat again being the uncertainty of whether or not these followers are actually real people.

It is important to emphasize, that all the tweets I have included in my analysis were extremely popular in comparison to the average users number of followers, which was 707 followers in 2016 (Kickfactory, 2016). With that said, the reach of the meddlers’ accounts is very difficult to assess, though there are a few things we can consider. Firstly, adding up all the Twitter followings, the number being approximately 368,478 Twitter users, which can certainly give some perspective on the scale of the Kremlin meddlers’ influence. However, obviously not all these followers are by guarantee situated in the U.S. and the U.K., and neither is it a given that these Twitter users were all eligible to vote in either the referendum or the election. Perhaps a number of these followers were also shared between all the accounts, so the accounts are not necessarily unique to each of the Kremlin meddler accounts either. Moreover, it is known that the IRA was in charge of bot-networks which might also have had a significant role to play in this puzzle, as it could have made up a huge portion of followers these accounts had. The effects are therefore not necessarily reflected in the high numbers of followings. It is clear that the Meddlers posting under pseudonyms were exponentially more popular in terms of followings, and interactions from other Twitter users. In total the pseudonyms had approximately 274,701, while the “news outlets” had approximately 93,777. Whether the Kremlin meddlers actively sought to “break through” to the traditional media, so they could in some way change the perceptions of people into thinking that no news could be trusted is hard to say from these tweets. It seems more likely that the accounts sought to remain in the shadows to spread deceitful news and influence the electorates via social media outlets.

So, what is the purpose of the Kremlin meddlers engaging in such communication, and who is it being aimed at? It seems that the purpose of their communication is to legitimize certain discourses, and to garner support about a specific ideological position. The Kremlin meddlers posing as British or U.S. nationals all relate, in one way or another, to ideology, in the form of

68 political issues that are directly related to the Brexit referendum or the U.S. presidential election, the latter of which is by far the most common amongst the accounts in my analysis. In terms of an audience the tweets are aimed at, for both the U.K. and the U.S. tweets, the most prevalent discourse, is that which supports the ideological right, often mocking and ridiculing supporters and representatives of the ideological left. As Van Dijk states, an ideological view is not something that is typically established over a short period of time or changed – that is a gradual process occurring over a longer period of time (Van Dijk, 2006, p. 116). Thus, one could argue it seems logical to conclude that the target audience of the Kremlin meddlers, in both the British and the U.S. context, is quite likely users that support the ideological right. It is important to emphasize that the users do not necessarily have to reflect, all the sometimes very extreme, statements made by the meddlers - however derogating the ideological opponent (Hillary Clinton, or the Remain Campaign), and highlighting the positive actions of Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders and the Leave Campaign is an effective means to create an illusion of a community existing amongst the meddlers and their followers, thus an environment in which discord can be sowed.

6.2 The U.K. and U.S. news media’s portrayal of the meddlers

As previously stated, I identified themes from the news articles through the use of qualitative coding and Van Dijk’s analytical tools, i.e. the macrorules, and discourse topics. In combination, these elements assisted me in finding the most essential themes of the articles. Each of the themes are made up of various ideological expressions whereby a certain portrayal of the meddlers in is discernable through the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis. As previously mentioned, this can be achieved through assessing the superstructure of articles, which organizes the meaning of an article as a whole. To reiterate the superstructure is made up of summary, episode and consequences (Van Dijk, 1988, p. 53). The summary (containing the headline and lead paragraph of an article), which plays the most significant role in organizing the meaning of the article, placing the overall narrational pattern of the article, and in determining how ideologies make themselves apparent in the discourse. The episode, which contains the central events of the story, any elaborations in regards to the background, adding context to the article. And consequences, containing final comments, predictions or evaluations from the writer (Ibid., p. 53).

The themes, characterized by ideological expressions, can also be scrutinized through theoretical terms from the framework, which will be applied when relevant. Some of these expressions are rather explicit - though most are not, thus needing to consider the social context and the news outlets’ ideological standpoints to critically comprehend and relate the expressions to the subject matter and question their function. This does not mean that a single news article cannot contain more than one of these themes, as the context in which the theme presents itself matters greatly. A news outlet, which is considered left on the ideological spectrum, may contain a theme that is also expressed in a right-of-center news outlet, however that does not mean there are no differences between how these different themes are (re)produced in the discourse. I would argue such nuances are inevitable, as such these will also be brought to light throughout the analysis.

6.2.1 Theme 1: Occupational meddlers The theme presents itself most commonly in right-leaning news outlets, specifically the broadsheets The Telegraph and the Chicago Tribune as well as the tabloids The Daily Mail and The New York Post. However, it is also present in the left-leaning broadsheets, The New York Times and The Guardian. How the theme presents itself, though, between the different news outlets across the spectrum, does vary a bit.

In one Telegraph article, and throughout all of The Daily Mail’s articles, the humanizing theme was used to paint a social reality, in which the meddlers at the IRA should be sympathized with because they are victims of contemporary Russian society. Throughout the articles, Russia is characterized as a country, where young people such as the meddlers, who have above-average English skills and are looking to be employed, are manipulated into a continuation of the status- quo of contemporary Russia by the ruling elite. The status-quo being described as a continuation of an isolationist country with little to no freedom of speech for its citizens. Essentially, these news outlets use the ideological expressions to portray Russian society, or more accurately, those with power, in a negative light with autocratic connotations, through the sympathizing tone with the meddlers.

One example of the above, is found in The Daily Mail’s coverage on the topic. The articles describe the IRA from the perspective of a meddler who has chosen not to have his name mentioned “Fearful for the consequences of speaking out in Putin’s Russia – where dissident voices can be ruthlessly despatched [sic] – the source has asked for anonymity.” (Appendix 7, a1). The anonymous voice further characterized as speaking “good but accented English”, and being “well-paid” (Appendix 7, a1), was also described as having been threatened by his former boss, and “began receiving threatening phone calls, with male voices threatening violence, blocked numbers [sic]. He became afraid to walk alone.” (Appendix 7, a1, a3).

The Chicago Tribune, a right-leaning broadsheet, portrays the consequences that the actions of the meddlers have had on the Russian people: “Laughing? Not so much. Most Russians just wish the election-tampering story would go away”, with the lead once again emphasizing that “Russians aren’t laughing their anythings [sic] off”. This sympathetic tone is not only apparent in the superstructure “summary” of the article, like the examples above. The article also features quotations from the symbolic elite - five high-standing Russian government officials and spokespersons denying the rumors of Russian election-meddling (Appendix 5, a1). Throughout the article, the writer continues to speak on behalf on Russian citizens making

71 claims such as: “For many Russians, the U.S. accusations have simply become tiresome”, or “many Russians would like the election-meddling topic to disappear” – similar variations of which appear a total of five times in the article (Appendix 5, a1). The “many Russians” are contrasted by a “vocal minority” who are trying to do the exact opposite, namely bring attention to the IRA and its campaigns (Appendix 5, a1). Thus, the theme is used, once again, to portray Russia negatively, by a right-wing news outlet.

Assessing the textual elements at the micro-level within this theme, there are some clear differentiations from the other themes I have identified. First and foremost, a rather straightforward distinction we can make is how the meddlers are referred to, which is quite a significant choice from the writer’s perspective as it, in part, represents how the reader might perceive the phenomena. In much the same way as one would interpret “freedom fighter” and “terrorist” in totally different ways (Van Dijk, 1988, p. 81), quotation marks are a tool, through which journalists can appear more objective in conveying their story, and distance themselves from taking an active role, or a stance on a given matter by engaging in name-calling (Van Dijk, 1988, p. 76). Perhaps even more salient; there is a great deal of difference between referring to someone as a “troll”, a “Russian agent”, as done in an article by the New York Post (Appendix 9, a1), “cyber recruits” and “shock troops” as done in The Daily Mail (Appendix 7), which brings about negative connotations and is dehumanizing, which relates to another theme I will examine later in this chapter.

In terms of lexical style, within this theme, the most common approach of referring to the meddlers was through using “troll” with quotation marks in the first mention, and then resorting to “trolls” without the quotation marks, seen e.g. in The Telegraph’s article (Appendix 3, a1). It must be emphasized though, that very few of the articles were consistent with how the meddlers were referred to, The Guardian would most often use “troll”, but sometimes also refer to them as, “employees” (Appendix 3, a1, a3). The same is true for referring to the IRA as “troll factory”, or “troll farm” where the most common name was “troll factory”, but also simply referred to it as the “Internet Research Agency”, or “The agency” (Appendix 4, a1). This can be clarified further with the term cognition, which is the term Van Dijk uses to address the notion that the symbolic elite’s discourse (re)production has a role in influencing how people perceive phenomena based on how it is portrayed in the news media, in quite subtle ways, such as the examples above e.g. the distinction between a “troll”, a troll or an employee. It is a subtle strategy and method to bring forth connotations for readers, to guide their

72 interpretation and set the context of a given phenomena in a certain ideological direction, and for the critical researcher to determine this subtle method at play (Van Dijk, 2006).

For the left-leaning news outlets within this theme, emotional appeal appears to be an important aspect of portraying former employees of the IRA. The theme most commonly appears in articles that focus on eye-witness accounts from former employees who decided to speak out about their experiences during their time working for the IRA, and what happened after they quit their job. For instance, in the New York Times’ article “Inside the Russian Troll Factory: Zombies and a Breakneck Pace”, focuses on two interviewees, both former employees at the IRA who agreed to the interview anonymously because of “threats and intimidation others have been subjected to for speaking out” (Appendix 6, a3).

Special effort is also put on characterizing the work as menial and draining. The working-hours are emphasized multiple times, stressing that the meddlers were working day and night in 12 hours shifts, and that the work they were performing was turning them into “zombies” (Appendix 6, a3). Furthermore, the salary an employee would come to earn working for the IRA is given emphasis (Appendix 6, a3). The continued mention of the pay that came along with working in the IRA, could be interpreted as a way in which a sympathetic stance is taken toward the meddlers, and conveyed so the reader, through cognition, may too consider the likelihood that the employees were not motivated by plans to disrupt democratic processes, or because they hate Western values; rather their actions were motivated by a wage, it was a job for all intents and purposes likely a well-paying and easy job for many. In ten out of the 30 articles, quotations from former employees at the IRA were used.

The left-leaning news outlets’ portrayal of the meddlers then, at least of those performing the menial tasks (and not those in the upper-echelons of the IRA), focuses on constructing a social reality in which they are not doing this because they are against western democracy, nor are they doing it to incite violence between citizens of the foreign nations, and neither with motives that suggest they want to aid in returning Russia to its former superpower status. Instead, the theme focuses on (re)producing a discourse whereby the meddlers do this as a job that is not politically motivated– they are simply ordinary people, with superior English skills involved in a discursive struggle between clashing ideologies, that they by all accounts stand little to gain from.

Ultimately, the left-wing news outlets, within this theme, differ from the right-wing news outlets, in terms of how the theme was brought forth and for what purpose. For the left-wing

73 news outlets, while the Russian society and the Russian government were painted in a somewhat negative light through the inclusion of eye-witness accounts, it was not done as explicitly, nor through the superstructure as it was in the right-wing context, where more focus was put on characterizing Russia as an autocratic state. Much more attention was, however, brought to describing the working conditions in detail, which the right-wing outlets did not touch upon.

6.2.2 Theme 2: Russia versus the West The main characteristic of this theme is in forming a worldview with a Them vs. Us categorization between two clashing ideologies, i.e. the Western and the Russian. This is identifiable in a few different ways, for instance via extensive use of the elite voice from all parties involved in the conflict, as detailed below. (Appendix 3, a3; Appendix 4, a1; Appendix 5, a1, a2; Appendix 7, a1, a2, a3; Appendix 8, a1, a2, a3; Appendix 9, a3)

• Great Britain: Prime Minister Theresa May, David Cameron, Members of Parliament (Conservative party and the Labour party), leaders from both sides in the Brexit referendum campaign, intelligence experts. • United States: Hillary Clinton, Senators, Donald Trump, Members of Congress, ambassador to Russia, intelligence experts. • Russia: President Vladimir Putin, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Presidential and Kremlin spokespersons, Yevgeny Prigozhin (responsible for the IRA) • Miscellaneous: NATO general, Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, Twitter and Facebook executives and spokespersons, professors and researchers.

According to Van Dijk (1988, p. 87), there are various reasons for the strategic inclusion of elite sources in journalistic material. First and foremost, the elite is generally considered more newsworthy in the eyes of the reader, and more reliable in formulating, evaluating and structuring perspectives on the given topic, therefore it is strategically used to enhance the truthfulness and credibility of the article. Furthermore, the selective use of specific sources (in this case, the elite) grants a more coherent ideological perspective in portraying the events of the meddlers, and also in the creation of the Russia versus the West worldview.

This theme primarily presents itself in news outlets on the ideological right of the spectrum. Specifically the broadsheets, The Telegraph, Chicago Tribune, and the tabloids The Daily Mail and The New York Post. The theme is also found in a left-leaning broadsheet and a tabloid,

74 respectively: The Guardian and The Mirror. And lastly, in a single instance of The Independent’s article, which is placed at the center of the ideological spectrum.

The first Guardian article characterizes the theme in a rather unique way that is not seen in the news outlets on the ideological right, nor in The Mirror’s portrayal. The notion that Russia has attempted to meddle in the Brexit referendum vote is explored in the article, however throughout, a passive tone is preferred, signifying the writer’s deliberate choice to remove an active bias taken from the new outlet’s side, instead giving agency to other actors involved in the process. This is seen superstructure “summary”, in the headline “Russia used hundreds of fake accounts to tweet about Brexit, data shows” (Appendix 4, a1), thus indicating a context whereby it is factual data that suggests this, and not The Guardian’s own conviction. Which is also reflected in examples such as “Researchers find”, “The agency has been linked” and “Concerns about Russia’s cyber-operations have also been raised elsewhere in Europe.” (Appendix 4, a1).

A bit less explicitly, the worldview is also constructed through the strategic inclusion of Western perspectives on the matter, versus just a single Russian perspective. In fact, seven elite voices from the West are used, versus one Russian in the form of a single comment from President Vladimir Putin, denying all accusations. In the superstructure “consequences”, the writer puts forth his own evaluations in relation to the meddlers “However, there is no doubt that many in Moscow welcomed the outcome.” (Appendix 4, a1). It is interesting to note that the writer specifically uses “Moscow”, and not “Russia”, which might suggest that the writer does not want to blame Russia as a nation of citizens, but perhaps rather the Russian elite ruling from the capital.

While the author does indeed bring forth this worldview whereby Russia is against the West – it is done so much less explicitly than what we will see later in this section, and not in the same aggressive manner, which also suggests it is brought forth for a different purpose. Inferable from the text, is another dimension of the construction of the Them vs. Us worldview, which is to critique Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May. Deputy leader of the Labour party, Tom Watson is given a central and an active voice in the article, both in describing Russia’s actions as severe, but also in having “urged Theresa May” to put pressure on Facebook and Twitter, and to take “take action against agents of the Russian state” (Appendix 4, a1). Therefore, in this article, the theme is also used to portray Theresa May in a manner that

75 suggests incompetence and the inability to react appropriately to the meddlers’ actions, through the use of quotes from a high-standing Labour member.

Moving on to the ideological right’s portrayal of the theme. In the theme, President Vladimir Putin is often given a direct and active role in orchestrating the IRA and the meddlers’ actions through the superstructure “summary”, which plays a significant role in presenting the article’s ideological standpoint, as well as in the lexical style. One example of this can be seen in the Daily Mail’s article, suggested in the headline:

Inside the Russian ‘troll factory’: How Putin’s unlikely cyber recruits deployed waves of fake news articles, memes and divisive social media posts in the Kremlin’s information war on the West (Appendix 7, a3)

Another example of Putin’s active role is clearly expressed in the second Chicago Tribune article, stating “The declassified report explicitly tied Russian President Vladimir Putin to the hacking of email accounts” (Appendix 5, a2).

Another example of this is seen in the Mirror article “Is Vladimir Putin using fake news to pull the strings in Brexit Britain?”, wherein it is stated “it seems the Russian leader is waging a new Cold War – this time using 140 characters” (Appendix 8, a1), and another Mirror article with the headline “Vlad’s army: NATO uncovers Russian plot to spark UK race war using Twitter trolls posing as attractive young women” (Appendix 8, a3). An active role is attributed to Vladimir Putin, and several instances of war-like lexical choices are chosen as seen above, e.g. “army”, “race war”, and “cold war”. Van Dijk argues that ideologies can be inferred from such lexical descriptions and identifications of actors in a given article (Van Dijk, 1988, p. 177). The war-like connotations and fear-mongering rhetoric that is brought forth is intrinsic to the themes within this discourse. Gone are the humanizing rhetoric we saw in the previous theme; the meddlers are at times defined as “cyber recruits”, “shock troops” and “agents”, and their acts are that of “state-funded propaganda”, in an “information war” (Appendix 7, a3; Appendix 9, a1). In a Daily Mail article, the IRA and the meddlers are described in a similar manner:

this is the nerve-centre for the shock troops of Vladimir Putin’s cyber army, whose round-the-clock outpouring of bile on to Western social media and comment forums is credited with playing a crucial role in sabotaging Hillary Clinton’s election campaign and propelling Donald Trump to the White House. (Appendix 7, a1)

The Telegraph also conveys a negative portrayal of the meddlers, albeit a more toned-down version. This is seen in the article “Russian internet trolls studied US politics watching House of Cards” where the writer describing an eye-witness account from a meddler, alludes to doubting the truthfulness of the meddlers’ comments. In the beginning of the article it is written that the meddler “claimed he was part of a network of Russians” (Appendix 3, a2), whereas in a later passage states “Maksim, who worked for Russia’s Internet Research Agency”, suggesting it is now a fact more so than a meddler merely claiming he was a part of the network.

The fear-mongering rhetoric continues throughout The Mirrors articles, with several elite voices being quoted, repeating the same rhetoric, for instance “Tanks and planes cripple your defences. Digital weapons do the same but you can’t see them coming.” (Appendix 8, a3), quoting a senior member of think tank Chatham House and even as “one of the genuine threats to our democracy”, quoting Conservative Member of Parliament Damian Collins (Appendix 8, a1). A NATO general is also quoted stating “Be under no illusions, the Russian threat is real. And we can’t defend ourselves by standing on the goal line.” (Appendix 8, a3).

Within the superstructure “episode” the journalist exhibits commentary drawing the journalists own views and evaluations into the article, claiming that “One well-aimed computer code could take down banks, mobile networks and hospital systems. But the Russian leader Putin believes the best way to defend his country is to sow race hatred in ours.”, adding “Russia’s warplanes buzz Britain’s airspace while its sub lurk in the North Atlantic” (Appendix 8, a3). In terms of cognition a context is established whereby the meddlers and Russia (not just the Kremlin) are to be interpreted as aggressors and a force to be feared, whereas the West are portrayed as the victims.

As the headline of Independent’s article might suggest, Russia is portrayed as a state is by all accounts and measures still stuck in the Soviet and cold war era: “How propaganda from the Russian revolution brought about today’s ‘troll factories’”. From all aspects of the superstructure, “summary” and consequences in the form of “evaluations”, imagery and references refer to major historical moments in Russian history, e.g. making the connection between Vladimir Lenin’s and Joseph Stalin’s “propaganda state” and contemporary Russian foreign politics.

Strong ideologically polarizing terms show the ideological foundation, and worldview the readers’ cognition is intended to be influenced by. This occurs through The Mirror and the right-wing news outlets’ (re)production of elite discourse with the strategic inclusion of quotes

77 from high-profile politicians and intelligence experts, which constructs a context where the West is incompatible with a war-hungry Russia, lessening the possibility for any sort of solidarity between ideological groups. This can also be interpreted from Russian values in general being conveyed in a negatively-loaded manner, e.g. “for many Russians, the main surprise after the United States indicted the most notorious troll farm was that the work might be considered criminal.” (Appendix 5, a3), presenting the idea that even Russian citizens are incompatible with Western democratic values. There is one exception to the above, found in The Guardian’s focus on using the theme to critique Theresa May, which could be attributed to the news outlet’s foundation as a left-wing broadsheet.

6.2.3 Theme 3: The meddlers’ impact This theme characterizes two opposite ends of the scale in portraying whether or not the meddlers’ practices had an impact on democratic processes in the U.K. and the U.S. On one hand, the unlikeliness of the meddlers’ impact is (re)produced through the use of elite voices and through the writer’s personal commentary on the matter. On the other hand, the certainty of the meddlers’ impact on democratic processes is presented. Modality is also central within this theme, in expressing the varying degrees to which the meddlers had an impact on democratic processes.

There are some differences between how left-leaning and right-leaning news outlets present this theme. In the article “Is Vladimir Putin using fake news to pull the strings in Brexit Britain” from the left-leaning tabloid The Mirror, the writer exhibits his personal opinion on the matter, which is discernable using the superstructure “episode”. Through the writer’s personal commentary, the improbability of the meddlers’ efforts having an impact on democratic processes is alluded to on multiple occasions, e.g. in a comment where he writes “others dismiss the claims as a conspiracy theory” (Appendix 8, a1), subsequently going on to state that:

There were many other reasons people were persuaded to follow then UKIP leader Nigel Farage’s call to vote Leave, ranging from concerns about immigration to the lure of taking back control. (Appendix 8, a1)

The writer proceeds to present a different version of why the U.K. voted to leave the EU, which was through a completely different kind of deceitful news, referring to an episode involving the NHS (British National Health Service):

any misinformation spread by Russia was dwarfed by the biggest piece of fake news of all: the promise of £350 million a week for the NHS. And that was promoted the old- fashioned way with an advert on the side of the bus. (Appendix 8, a1)

The purpose of using this theme within this specific article, seems to not be all that related to the meddlers’ impact. Rather the theme seems to be for the writer to air his personal opinion on deceitful news, which he claims happened within Britain, by the Vote Leave Campaign and was therefore not related to the Kremlin meddlers’ actions.

From an ideological perspective, it is certainly not unlikely that one could argue that it is in the interest of those who were hoping Donald Trump would win the U.S. election, and that Britain would leave the European Union, to deny that the meddlers’ actions had any impact on these democratic processes. This perspective can be inferred from another of The Mirror’s articles, from all instances of the included elite voices, specifically Prime Minister Theresa May, and Arron Banks (founder of the Leave.EU campaign). They both mirror the sentiment that there is no evidence that Russia directly interfered in the referendum vote. (Appendix 8, a2)

On the opposite end of the scale we see varying degrees of the certainty in regards to the meddlers’ impact, which can be identified through the writers’ use of modality, ranging from expressing likelihood to expressing absolute certainty. This most prominently occurs in the right-leaning tabloid The Daily Mail, wherein it is stated that the meddlers “may have helped Trump and (…) poisoned the Brexit debate too.” (Appendix 7, a1), and the lead in the same article reading “Trolls are credited with playing a crucial role in sabotaging Clinton’s campaign”. A section detailing the background in the same article stated, “How Vladimir Putin’s troll factory DID twist the Brexit vote” (Appendix 7, a1). One could interpret this as the creation of a social reality in which the Republican Party and Donald Trump could not possibly have won without the aid of the meddlers attacking Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. These types of statements are only made by U.K. news outlets, none such exist in the U.S. contexts.

Highly-organized strategy is credited with playing a role in toppling Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid (Appendix 7, a3)

Where elite voices, such as Theresa May and the founder of the Leave.EU campaign denied the impact of Russian meddling in the previous theme - within this theme the CEO of the Best for Britain (a British pro EU campaign), claimed that:

With every passing day it is looking more like the EU referendum was influenced by the Russians. Their plan to rip us away from our friends and allies, added to helping Donald Trump win the Presidency was the biggest intelligence coup of modern times. (Appendix 8, a2)

On one hand, one could say it is inferable that there are two competing ideological views within this theme; namely those who benefitted from the meddlers’ efforts, stressing the improbability of there being any real impact, which ideologically speaking should be The Daily Mail on the right. And on the opposite side, those who did not benefit from the meddlers’ efforts, contending with varying degrees of certainty, that the interference did have an effect, though that it is unclear exactly what that effect was, which ideologically speaking would be The Mirror on the left. However, the news outlets’ ideological leanings, in this context, do not consistently line up with these perspectives. There are various explanations to this, one being the fact that news production can, quite broadly, be viewed as the meticulous portrayal of events, and the careful construction of certain social realities for a specific purpose of influencing the readers’ cognition. However, on the other hand, news production can also be viewed as the product of simple day-to-day decisions in a busy schedule with deadlines to meet (Van Dijk, 1988). Therefore, ideological expressions can never fully be regarded as consistent across all instances of journalistic material, even if such material derives from the same news outlet.

6.2.4 Sub conclusion From the analysis of the three themes, it is clear that differences across the ideological spectrum do exist. However, the differences did not always show themselves consistently in the different articles from the same news outlet. The most prominent example of this, is found in The Mirror’s, a left-wing tabloid, coverage of the second and the third theme. In the second article The Mirror expressed ideology, as one would come to expect from the outlet’s ideological inclination – however, as seen in the analysis, the other two articles were characterized by ideological expressions closely related with those expressed in the right-wing outlets. This also occurred in the third theme, in the context of The Daily Mail articles expressing likelihood and certainty in the meddlers’ actions, though with no perceived ideological gain to be had from (re)producing that discourse. It might be attributed to the notion presented at the end of the third theme, or indeed because tabloids, are often perceived as seeking to sensationalize news through controversial statements, and more colorful language (Van Dijk, 1993) – as we did

80 indeed see in the analysis. There were no significant differences in how the broadsheets differed between the U.S. and the U.K. contexts, though USA Today’s articles were the most sober, matter-of-fact assessments and portrayals of the events. However, the British tabloid news outlets were quite unlike the U.S., with significantly more inflammatory language, and negatively-loaded descriptions of the meddlers, whereas the U.S. tabloids were more prosaic, in portraying similar events and conveying the same themes.

In some cases, explicit ideologies expressions were apparent in the articles, these were most commonly found from right-wing news outlets in the form of ideological expressions in the superstructure “summary”, and through lexical style. However, more commonly these ideological expressions were implicit more so than explicit, which was especially true for the left-wing broadsheets. Indeed Van Dijk (1988, p. 11) too claims that glaringly obvious biases, e.g. in the form of the journalist’s commentary, are not commonly found in instances of mainstream journalistic discourse; it must be stressed that above all the media should not be interpreted as an objective representation or account of events as they occur in reality, instead they give a version of aspects of a given event, (re)producing already established ideologies. These themes, and thus ideologies, as previously established, become discernable for the critical analyst in much less explicit ways, e.g. through lexical style, fear-mongering rhetoric, us vs. them categorization as clarified in the analysis. Moreover, as I found earlier in this chapter, from the selective use of the voice of the symbolic elite throughout nearly all the articles (20 out of the 30), regardless of the news outlets’ country of origin or political inclination.

Intrinsic to all the themes is the notion that dominance and power is consistently displayed through the unique access the news media has to the symbolic elite, i.e. highly recognizable and prominent politicians. This creates a context whereby the readers’ cognition is influenced to perceive a social reality whereby elite politicians, are the voices to be heard on these matters. The elite then, is given the unique access as the voice to be heard on these matters, while the average person’s voice is left out the debate entirely. This goes in both directions and is not just in regards to the British or American nationals who might have been exposed to the ads, or social media posts from the IRA – indeed the voices of the Russian people might not have been totally irrelevant to consult either. The news media also utilized various methods to reduce subjectivity in the discourse and enhance objectivity, e.g. accomplished through eye-witness accounts, as well as direct quotes from the sources directly involved (which was done in 10 of the articles). While it is true the eye-witness accounts cannot, in isolation, be regarded as voices

81 of the symbolic elite; it is the function and the purpose of their inclusion in the articles that are of salience – hence it is regarded these eye-witness accounts are included in the articles as a strategic device to make the symbolic elite appear more objective in their construction of the social reality.

7. Conclusion

In this thesis, I aimed to critically examine the communication of the Kremlin meddlers on Twitter, as well as analyze how they were portrayed in the U.K. and U.S. news media.

The two research questions were constructed for the purpose of, on one hand, achieving the deep and detailed knowledge of practices intended to disrupt democratic processes by delegitimizing institutions, and attempting to sow discord between citizens through ideologically polarizing communication. And on the other hand, obtaining knowledge in relation to how this was portrayed in the news media, which was regarded as crucial to explore because the news media does not reflect reality, but rather constructs versions of a social reality for specific purposes, for the public to perceive. Thus, in combination, both research questions are regarded as not only sufficient, but also necessary to achieve the critical exploration of both sides in this discursive struggle.

In the first part of the analysis, Twitter posts from 14 different accounts were examined. Here it was found that there were two types of accounts. One type consisted of six different Twitter accounts, that all assumed aliases, impersonating U.S. or British nationals, purporting to be actual citizens of those nations. The function of the ideologies expressed, was to cause ideological polarization by appealing the ideological right through (re)producing discourse hyper-critical of the ideological left, its political representatives and media outlets with a perceived left bias. The other type, consisting of eight accounts, differed in that they pretended to be, and acted as if they were legitimate news outlets. This type would rarely allude to any ideological expressions, instead simply (re)producing news disseminated by legitimate news outlets. Two of them did express discourse, much like the first type, and would engage in (re)production of deceitful news highly critical of the ideological left. The pursuit of ideological polarization was also central in their communication. It is clear the first research question contributed to exploring this set of empirical data and allowed for the problematization and critical exploration of how the meddlers communicated via Twitter to further their agenda of disrupting democratic processes in the U.K. and the U.S.

In the second part of the analysis, wherein I examined 30 news articles, differences were found between the news outlets’ coverage of the Kremlin meddlers; the superstructures and lexical style being the main differences across the ideological spectrum. Three themes were identified from the articles, all of which (re)produced elite discourse. The elite was given the unique

83 access as the voice to be heard on these matters, while the average person’s voice is left out the debate entirely. Eye-witness accounts also used to represent the elite perspective, likely to reduce subjectivity from the symbolic elite’s side, in order to appear more objective. While the same themes were found across the ideological spectrum, the context and purpose in which the themes were used, were nuanced. The context and purpose the themes were situated in, were mostly consistent with the different news outlets’ ideological inclinations, however, not in all cases, as seen in the context of The Mirror, and The Daily Mail. On one hand, this could be attributed to individual writers’ personal ideological views being more prevalent than that of the specific news outlet. On the other hand, the intricacies of journalistic material, and the necessity to meet deadlines, could explain why such views are not always as fleshed out across all instances of journalistic material, and therefore not consistent. The second research question allowed for the scrutinization of this set of empirical data, through critically questioning how ideology was (re)produced through the discourse.

Critical Discourse Analysis proved applicable to the empirical data. The theoretical lens, and the theoretical concepts were for the most part pertinent in terms of examining how (both in terms of micro and superstructures) ideologies are expressed and (re)produced. This was especially true in the context of analyzing the news articles, where Van Dijk’s analytical tools were also useful in identifying and extracting only the most central themes from the discourse. In the context of the meddlers’ tweets, theoretical terms that were closely connected to scrutinizing the symbolic elite, were not applicable to the same degree as they were for the journalistic material, which is largely because of the inherent differences between the two genres.

The thesis has contributed in terms of examining concrete examples of discourse (re)produced with the malicious intentions of meddling in foreign nations’ democratic processes by attempting to deceive its citizens. The thesis also contributes in critically scrutinizing the news media’s (re)production of discourse which it was found to preferring the voice of the elite in matters of complex and sensitive matters of international relations. The study and its findings can therefore be regarded as a contemporary example of how a discursive struggle between clashing ideologies across different media may be scrutinized.

7.1 Limitations of the study

This study set out to explore how the Kremlin meddlers sought to communicate through Twitter and ran into multiple obstacles and challenges along the way as a result of this very decision. With political pressure from the highest echelons of U.S. and U.K. politics, the choices made by the private corporations Twitter and Facebook in trying to play down the extent to which deceitful news was being disseminated through their platforms was simply too unpredictable to foresee before setting out to do this study. To the dismay of this researcher, and likely future researchers within this field, much of the data that could have been examined to get a more fully-fledged picture of the meddlers efforts has been lost, and only pieces of the full puzzle have been assembled in this study, and can give conclusions no deeper than the data allows.

As for the news media’s portrayal of the events, the study is limited in the fact that its scope were set to the U.S. and the U.K. context, and could only give concrete conclusions of how the meddlers were portrayed within these boundaries. The conclusions of the study may therefore limited in scope, and can only give hints to what a broader set of data examined over a longer period of time, may have suggested. 7.2 Future research

The topics I explored in this thesis will continue to be researched to great extents in the future – the complete picture of the Kremlin meddlers’ efforts and impact is infinitely far from being fully explored in this thesis, and in the current body of literature. New information about the extent to which the IRA and the Kremlin meddlers sought to influence not only in the U.K. and U.S. contexts, but also other political processes in e.g. Ukraine, Germany, Spain and France, is still coming out on a weekly, if not daily basis. It will undoubtedly be interesting for future researchers to examine the Kremlin meddlers’ communications on other platforms than Twitter, e.g. Facebook, where there is no 280-character restriction on messages – to see if and how the communication differs. Furthermore, surveys or interviews could prove to be an alternative to the methods I employed in my thesis, in e.g. examining whether and how deceitful news has impacted news consumption habits. Moreover, examining the news media’s coverage of the meddlers in different contexts from the U.K. and the U.S. could also be a future focus, as well as investigating people’s perception of the media’s portrayal. Finally, the thesis has provided a contemporary perspective on “trolling”, and “fake news” with new operationalizations. This contribution might be of assistance to future researchers in examining similar topics with what the study deems to be more fitting terminology - or alternatively

85 inspiring future researchers to critically interpret existing operationalizations, even those brought forth in this study.

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9. Appendices