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Analyzing the IRA Tweets
The chosen objects of study are organized under the hashtag: #maga. #maga is a trending hashtag topic that stands for: Make America Great Again, which was Donald Trump’s slogan during his presidential campaign in 2016. The analysis will concentrate on tweets (on #maga) as the main objects of study. The analysis will describe the various rhetorical purposes they serve and the relation of those purposes to Network Propaganda. The analysis will also try to establish the tweets’ position in the created network and, finally, the insights gained by seeing them on the network. I chose tweets from #maga as my objects of study because I believe that they have a lot of interesting information about US politics and things that affect it. Things that are speculated while some of them have been proven to have the aim of disrupting the US election. Some of these tweets were developed by Russian intelligence agency with the sole purpose of interfering with the US elections of 2016.
Some of the tweets I chose as objects of study with the slogan #maga include @Pamela_moore13, ‘voting Hilary because she’s a woman is like drinking antifreeze because it looks like Gatorade,’ @Reagnite_1993 says, ‘spending half of what she spends working TWICE AS HARD and seeing MEGA RESULTS.’ These tweets represent some of the opinions of many Americans who believe that Hilary Clinton was not fit to be present. Most of them think Hilary Clinton is one of the most corrupt individuals in American Politics. Another tweet by @prettylaraplace, ‘Trump is right again! Leaked emails show the tension between a general and the WH’, another one by @michellearry uses both the slogans; #maga and #Never Hillary and says, ‘The day after Trump gets elected, it’ll be time to take out the trash!’ From the #maga, many Americans seem to be angered by Hilary and support Donald Trump for the presidency (“All Accounts Using Hashtag #Maga”).
The tweets mentioned above serve the rhetorical purpose of reaffirming in-group identity, where Donald Trump supporters discredit the other party’s campaign strategies. The in-group identity served the purpose of persuading the public to vote for Donald Trump while still degrading the opponent’s (Hillary Clinton) name. The use of metaphors is also evident in the various responses by online ‘citizens.’ A good example is when one of the tweets refers to electing “Hilary based on her gender is like antifreeze because it looks like Gatorade” The metaphorical use has been used to easily explain the absurdness that would be clear if Hilary was voted in (“All Accounts Using Hashtag #Maga”). The particular arguments mentioned on various tweets under #maga mainly consist of the metaphorical language used to further create distrust among other American citizens to degrade Hilary. However, based on Research by Robert Mueller and other investigative closures, it is highly probable that most of the tweets were used by Russian-made bots and cyborgs that hacked into the American system to create chaos US government (Benkler et al., 2018). The main purpose in the tweets (#maga) is very similar to the one mentioned in ‘Network Propaganda by Benker et al.,’ which is to tamper with America’s electoral process by ensuring that most Americans vote for Donald Trump instead of Hilary Clinton.
Besides, some of the tweets in the hashtag (#maga) on Twitter also raise foreign policy that they believed needed to be changed. The foreign policy was implemented with the aim of diplomacy in solving and discussing international problems. The policy’s objective is to ensure that countries settle problems or disagreements in a diplomatic manner rather than through military action. As a result, it is the president’s duty to ensure that the foreign policy is molded to be beneficial to all, especially his country. With the hacking and the use of cyborgs by the Russian agencies to infiltrate and corrupt America’s electoral process, it is highly probable that the tweets on foreign policy and degradation of both Obama and Hillary could be influenced by the Russian Intelligence Agencies (Woolley & Douglas, 2019). To prove this based on the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) research, it was clear that the Russian Government favored the then ‘president-elect’ Donald Trump. According to the ICA, the Russian Government “Aspired to help president-elect Trump’s election chances by possible discrediting Hillary by publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him” (US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence).
Based on the #MAGA analysis on the network, it is clear that the hashtag attracted a lot of attention, especially in the US. The hashtag received a lot of tweets from Americans, especially around the upper states of America. Many Americans voted for Donald Trump because of the network propaganda that backed the hashtag (#MAGA) on social media. Seeing and analyzing the hashtag tweets (#MAGA) on Twitter gave me the perception that it is indeed possible for Cyborgs to be used as a tool in network propaganda for intelligence and technology infiltration by the rival countries or countries that could benefit if things were different in the US. The particular insight is backed up by twitter statistics that show approximately more than 36000 Russian- linked bot accounts tweeted about the US elections during the presidential campaign period of 2016 (US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 2018).
Work Cited
“All Accounts Using Hashtag #Maga.” The Russia Tweets, 2020, https://russiatweets.com/hashtag/maga/authors.
Benkler, Yochai, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts. Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and radicalization in American politics. Oxford University Press, 2018.
US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. “Exposing Russia’s Effort to Sow Discord Online: The Internet Research Agency and Advertisements.” (2018).
Woolley, Samuel C., and Douglas Guilbeault. “United States: Manufacturing Consensus Online.” Computational Propaganda: Political Parties, Politicians, and Political Manipulation on Social Media. (, 2019).