Study: Russian trolls, bots may have amplified the online hate directed at Star Wars: The Last Jedi
By Dan Selcke
Star Wars: The Last Jedi came out in December of last year, and almost immediately, it became a flashpoint for debate, with fans in different camps defending it as a bold subversion of series traditions or decrying it as an epic failure. Things got ugly, particularly on social media, with the worst of the vitriol reserved for crew members like director Rian Johnson and stars like Kelly Marie Tran, the latter of whom left Instagram after it became unbearable.
It was a weird time in fandom…perhaps weirder than we knew. Morten Bay, a research fellow at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, has conducted a study and concluded that a good chunk of the online hate directed Johnson’s way was actually the result of Russian bots and trolls deliberately trying to sew discord. You can read his full paper here, although here’re the gist of his findings:
"The study finds evidence of deliberate, organized political influence measures disguised as fan arguments. The likely objective of these measures is increasing media coverage of the fandom conflict, thereby adding to and further propagating a narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society. Persuading voters of this narrative remains a strategic goal for the U.S. alt-right movement, as well as the Russian Federation. The results of the study show that among those who address The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson directly on Twitter to express their dissatisfaction, more than half are bots, trolls/sock puppets or political activists using the debate to propagate political messages supporting extreme right-wing causes and the discrimination of gender, race or sexuality. A number of these users appear to be Russian trolls."
Okay, let’s back up for a second and look at Bay’s methods. To start, he looked at tweets directed at Rian Johnson in the wake of the movie’s release. After what we’re sure was a splendid time doing that, he divided those tweets into three categories: 1) Fans who genuinely didn’t like the movie — most of the people in this group tweeted frequently about Star Wars even before The Last Jedi hit theaters; 2) People who may or may not have been into Star Wars but who tweeted about The Last Jedi because they opposed what they perceived as its left-leaning political message; and 3) trolls who set up accounts just to hate on the movie and/or autonomous bots.
Bay admits that he can’t be sure which, if any, of the trolls were from Russia, although he does lay out some generally accepted methods of deducing their identities, including choice of screen name and a habit of posting during peak hours. Bots, on the other hand, have pretty obvious tells and are easy to spot.
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Overall, Bay concluded that “50.9% of those tweeting negatively [about The Last Jedi] were likely politically motivated or not even human.” And we should point out that, of all the tweets Bay looked at, only 21% were negative to start with.
The question of why people — Russian or otherwise — would purposefully stoke divisions in fandom is harder to determine, although reports of widespread Russian interference in the 2016 election could provide a guide. The idea, then as now, is that Russia wasn’t so much interested in endorsing one side or the other of a political divide so much as it was in endorsing division itself, since the more divided Americans were, the easier it was for Russia to accomplish its goals. This isn’t a political site, but it’s no secret that American politics have been…how do I put this…um…touchy of late, with a lot of ill feeling on both sides of the aisle. The idea that this divide wouldn’t limit itself to politics but spill over into pop culture makes sense, and is, frankly, kinda creepy. I suggest periodic group hugs until the problem passes.
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