全球智库信息集成服务系统

Russian content is particularly effective at achieving its goal of generating strong reactions along partisan lines

• Strongly positive emotional reactions to such social media content increase the chances that participants will self-report "liking" and sharing it.

Revealing the source of the Russian memes reduced the probability of a positive emotional response to content that aligned with a participant's ideology

• Compared with the emotional effects generated among participants for whom the source was hidden, participant willingness to engage by "liking" or sharing material for which the source was exposed was weaker.
• In the overall sample, revealing the source reduced the likelihood that participants would "like" pro-U.S. Russian content, but no other effects for "liking" or sharing were statistically significant.

Revealing the source and showing a video about media literacy had a stronger effect on two particular audience profiles

• Members of a Partisan Left group read the New York Times, lean left politically, and embody several other characteristics.
• Members of a Partisan Right get their news from Fox News or from politically far-right outlets and lean right politically.
• Participants in both of these groups exhibit strong responses to Russian memes that align with their political ideologies, and both groups demonstrated a reduced emotional response to that propaganda and were less likely to "like" that propaganda when informed of its Russian source.
• The video on media literacy also appeared to reduce the number of self-reported "likes" for pro-U.S. and politically right-leaning Russian content in the Partisan Right group.

Given the size and scope of the Russian propaganda campaign that targeted the U.S. electorate in 2016, it is critical to understand both the impact of that campaign and the mechanisms that can reduce the impact of future campaigns. This report, the third in a four-part series, describes a study conducted by RAND researchers to assess how people react to and engage with Russia's online propaganda and to determine whether the negative effects of that engagement can be mitigated by brief media literacy advisories or by labeling the source of the propaganda. Russia targets the extremes on both sides of the political divide, and a short media literacy video and labeling intervention were both shown to reduce willingness among particular categories of participants (defined by news consumption habits) to "like" the propaganda.

This is one of the first studies to show that Russian propaganda content works, at least partially, as it is intended to — that is, it successfully elicits strong partisan responses that may help it exacerbate divisions in American society. For certain audiences, the content is also likeable and sharable. This study is among the first to use actual Russian propaganda in a randomized controlled trial.

• Chapter One

  Introduction

• Chapter Two

  Russian Propaganda, Political Memes, and Fissures in American Society

• Chapter Three

  How the Experiment Was Conducted

• Chapter Four

  Partisanship and Responses to Russian Propaganda

• Chapter Five

  Politically Partisan Effects and Types of News Consumers

• Chapter Six

  Conclusions and Implications for Future Research

• Appendix A

  Memes Used in This Study

• Appendix B

  Supplementary Results