Charge of the Light Brigade by Richard Caton Woodville, Jr. This was a charge of British light cavalry led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854, in the Crimean War
By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
You remember The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson?
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
Sounds like a good description of a Kremlin bot, no? And from a war against the Russians!
Hamilton 68, a project of the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy, is named after the Federalist Paper No. 68, mainly about electing an executive under the Constitution. While the explanation is that no. 68 contains a reference to foreign meddling in elections, it also serves as a reference to Trump -- like so many things -- and the view that he bends if not breaks the US Constitution.
Hamilton 68 tracks Russian propaganda in real time and lets you know what the current and trending topics are -- so you can be on the lookout. How does it do that? By monitoring 600 accounts in particular, which are a mixture of actual Russian state operators, pro-Kremlin suspected state operatives, Kremlin sympathizers who may have "come by their views honestly," bots (Kremlin-sponsored or for-hire) and cyborgs (accounts run by bots sometimes, humans other times, and who knows?).
Bot or Not? Moscow Tool or Fool?
So very soon after it was announced, Politico's Josh Rogin tweeted about the #FireMcMasters campaign on Twitter, citing "the 600" which was now blessed as "science". Naturally, there was a big debate then about it, with many pointing out that they were "real" and came by their view to fire McMasters "honestly".
The top hashtag among 600 Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence operations was #FireMcMaster https://t.co/Bv4mLAlO4d
— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) August 7, 2017
Rogin, like Digital Forensics Research Lab, singled out Lee Stranahan (@stranahan) as the pro-Kremlin culprit leading the charge of the bot brigade -- a known conservative and former Breitbart journalist who now works for the Kremlin propaganda outlet Sputnik (he has his own debate show together with a liberal commentator). All of this seemed like a slam-dunk, unless you'd been watching at home since 2007 on Twitter, as I have, when I first met Stranahan, who at that time worked for Huffpo and was a leftist libertarian of sorts. Later he became a rightist libertarian, although now he calls himself a "populist" -- and has worked again for Breitbart and been fired again.
The Sputnik thing is mainly to pay the bills -- Lee has a wife and children to support, and I don't think his Periscope TV show and "Citizens Journalism School" bring in tons of money, especially since Google shut down his YouTube channel after "three strikes you're out" offenses (a terrible thing, regardless of what you think of his views, and it could happen to you -- he claims that one of the infractions was for running an ISIS film clip in the context of a story criticizing them -- his point that only the offending video should be removed and not the entire channel and all the content is a valid one. Stranahan's TV, regardless of its rambling style and Infowars sponsorship (now) is no ISIS channel and more sophisticated than pewdiepie or some of the outright racists. Even if YouTube blocks you, they should at least give you a week to copy your work -- it's outright theft for them to remove the whole channel and take all your work with you, which you may not have copies of).
I haven't known Stranahan to be a Kremlin symp all these years -- what he's doing now with all his crazy "man bites dog Soros and Ukraine interfered in our elections" stuff is being contrarian -- this is a simulacrum of investigative journalism for some (although in fairness, Stranahan has done some important shoe-leather work investigating stories over the years which is under-appreciated). Recently he had a stroke but recovered more or less; the success of the McMasters campaign I credit less from Kremlin bots and more to do with the fact that Lee's technologically-minded son now works for him and has helped him build up a lot more lists and presence on social media; that, and the fact that a sizable contingent of people are looking for someone to blame for the Trump Administration's failures while clinging to Trump himself. It's not really about the Kremlin; the Kremlin just amplified it. I don't think you will find that the Kremlin bots pushed #FireMcMasters first before Lee -- but it's always worth checking.
In this case, the story of the 600 at least identified @stranahan as a carrier or instigator of the story -- but we don't know if he is on the list. I cite this little anecdote mainly to point out that "it's complicated" determining whether the Kremlin runs disinformation campaigns and "interferes with our elections" -- although unlike Stranahan, I have absolutely no doubt that Putin personally and his henchmen did indeed manipulate media and people in our last elections -- and in politics more widely.
So...there might be among these 600 in the Light Brigade "those who came by their views honestly" or those who are "organically pro-Kremlin," and that is apparently why the curators of the web site are not revealing that list. They argue "practically," too, that if they reveal those people/bots, they or their wranglers will "change their behavior." They might close their accounts or stop tweeting, or seed their Twitter feed with just enough anti-Putin material to make you wonder, and so on.
ProporNot Backlash
There's another reason for this: the horrible backlash experienced by people who may have been the same people associated with Ham68 when they had a site called "ProporNot" (as in "is it propaganda or not") -- no longer updated -- and an anonymous Twitter account by the same name (who was said to be Andrew Weisburd even before he gave his name among the experts on Ham68). The two sites were mentioned as doing similar work in at least one news story; some believe it was indeed the same people, although I suppose this has not been scientifically proven.
At any rate, ProporNot ran a list of 200 sites they felt were spreading Russian propaganda. This caused the predictable howling from liberal journalists who were either on it (in which case they thought it was a badge of honour) or thought it was horrid McCarthyism on behalf of their colleagues who were put on it. Naked Capitalism threatened a lawsuit against Washington Post, not because WP mentioned them, but because they featured ProporNot which did.
Predictable -- because this list-making and publication and howling has occurred a number of times before, with a list published by a Scandinavian blogger a few years ago of journalists he thought were soft on Russia in covering the war in Ukraine and in projects like the Ukrainian-sponsored Myrotvorets (Peacekeeper) which publishes the names of separatist fighters and at one point, to universal condemnation in the journalists' community, revealed a list of all those journalists accredited by the soi-disant "Donetsk People's Republic". In doing so, they revealed their phone numbers and addresses which could have put them in harm's way, although claims that a journalist who was murdered was exposed in this way were false, as he wasn't on the list and the story that he was in fact was a fake promoted by the Myrotvorets site owners to capture gullible journalists (RT.com wouldn't give up insisting that in fact it was true).
The Swedish blogger's list (I can't find it now) had obvious Krem-symps like the notorious Graham Phillips who works for Red Star TV (yes, that Red Army) and used to work for RT before they decided he was too much of a goof -- but it also had liberal reporters like Oliver Bulloughs who are critical about Russia but just not craven about the Ukrainian cause. People rage and rage about these lists -- just the mere fact that ProporNot listed us in their blog roll made people angrily suspect The Interpreter (we had nothing to do with it).
In the finest tradition of "anti-anti-communism," Adrian Chen devoted a widely-RT'd article, "Propaganda About Russian Propaganda" in the New Yorker to it; Glenn Greenwald went ballistic merely because the Washington Post reported on this site within the context of a story about Kremlin-sponsored fake news, as did others.
It's very hard to do anti-disinformation work without constantly being slammed as a propagandist yourself. That's why it's important that states do this work without caring whether they are viewed as propagandists because states propagandize, that's what they do; and why it's important that the non-profit and commercial media also tackle it because it's important that there be pluralism in debate and credible exposes -- although it will never be enough for some.
Myrotvorets messed up by including people like Steve Rosenberg of the BBC, who is such a Russophile that he and his camera crew were roughed up and expelled from Russia for trying to cover the story of Russian volunteer fighters killed in Ukraine but not acknowledged. And continued to mess up, targeting the wrong Ukrainian journalists who work in Russia.
I always thought that a little-discussed aspect of the Myrotvorets fandango was that all these journalists had to go through the restrictive process of registering with the DNR and presumably taking their minders or checking in regularly with them, but how many of them mentioned that fact in their stories?
In any event, Hamilton68, now shorn of ProporNot, or at least its methods, is that liberal academic thing that should credibly do this job -- were it not for the failure to publish the list.
Guess What, Kremlin Propaganda Sites Propagandize!
I suppose the most important factlet of the Dashboard -- in the upper right corner -- most people are right-lookers -- traditionally the space where newspapers put their war news -- is the "Top Tweet". This is the top tweet among those 600, evidently - and here you can see that surprise, surprise, RT.com owns this space more often than not.
A look at the dashboards "reveals" another "big scoop" -- RT.com, sptnkne.ws and other outright Kremlin propaganda outlets are always on the top lists, i.e. doing the most propagandizing. Also leftist pro-Kremlin sites like zerohedges.com and American conservative sites said to be the home of the alt.right like truepundit.com are there, although sprinkled with what are viewed as "mainstream" sites like CBS or "alternative but liberal" sites like dailybeast.com
So RT.com is earning its keep instead of making out-of-work American journalists do this job, but what are we to make of this?
Of course, the point of this site isn't to tell you what you already know -- that RT.com is a Kremlin tool and zerohedge shares the Kremlin's views.
The point, journalistically, I supposed -- backed by science! -- is to show you those trending topics so you can batten down the hatches...or something.
Of course, there's another way to get Moscow's trending topics on Twitter -- put your location as "Moscow" -- Twitter doesn't care if that isn't where you are -- and you will get a list, for example, like tonight's:
There's you'll see Saakashvili is on top -- for breaking into Ukraine after being kicked out -- he's a garden perennial with anything he does. Then there is "United Russia" -- the ruling party that surprise, surprise, came out on top in the Moscow municipal elections. The hashtag "honestelections -- well.... and "Novo-Peredelkino" -- a district where the head of the elections commission got on TV the night before and told everyone whom her favourites were from United Russia. And so on -- a very local topic, if you will, that didn't get much play in the Western press at all, although it may, as a number of opposition people like Ilya Yashin surprisingly won in their districts, with the low turn-out.
So what's trending on Ham68?
Well, Irma and other hurricane hashtags -- Russian state media always loves to report on our misfortunes -- and Ukraine -- maybe due to Saakashvili. But stevebannon is a recognizable topic coming up -- and we learn from what's perhaps the most interesting part of the dashboard -- the list of most tweeted URLs -- what these stories are:
o George Clooney Uncensored: ‘Steve Bannon Is a Pussy’
o 60 Minutes - Charlie Rose interview with Steve Bannon
If you look up just the straight URL of the first story on Twitter, you see there aren't that many references under "top news" - maybe there are more in the shortened URLs. A lot of them are negative -- i.e. defending Bannon from Cluny, and therefore presumably alt-right fodder for Krem-bots. But some are positive. Same with the other story in reverse.
Ham68 doesn't want this to be the most interesting part of the site because they make it difficult for you to capture the URLs -- if you click on them, you won't go to those stories, to try to fathom whether they are pro-Kremlin bait that these mainstream sites got infected with OR mainstream stories that proved to be fodder for alt-right and Kremlinoid sites. Instead, you will only be taken to a boring graph about how they are increasing or not. Don't try to copy it with your mouse, either, as it won't copy -- but if you click SEARCH if you happen to have that option, that will at least finally give you a URL to capture. Annoying! But then, they don't want you doing this: trying to figure out IF mainstream media is either a) infected or b) infecting.
For my money, that's the point of this exercise, however. That the Kremlin will jump on the hurricane or a shooting in Texas (reported everywhere but not on these trends) is old news. That mainstream media sometimes gets busted with fake news is old news by now, too. But if you could watch in real time how this happens, that would be new news.
Algorithm -- and Chocolate -- Quality Control
It's work though, and of the type that needs humans, not algorith,s. I remember how I tracked the claims of a Russian OSCE ambassador about being especially banned from a voting station to the Daily Kos and Infowars -- there are certain old networks that unfailing echo the Kremlin.
Ham68 makes much of its algorithms -- and what's all the rage now -- its trained algorithms that it has made "smart" by "educating" it -- this is artificial intelligence or "machine learning".
The dirty little secret to machine learning, hower, is that it is based on flawed organic human intelligence that devises the algorithms to use, rejecting some, accepting others. What if the experts publicized the algorithms they use? This may be proprietary information or a trade secret, but insiders might then examine and critique them.
I recently attended a lecture on machine learning and the Internet of Things where a guy explained how algorithms were selected and computers "taught" to track the manufacturing of Hershey's candies. They have to be a standard weight and quality and years and years of engineering of the old-fashioned kind have gone in to making the process efficient -- if a lot of candy bars that aren't 3 ounces have to be thrown out, it's a loss for the company.
What this fellow noted in his lecture was the science of this process -- that they put in sensors that they thought would yield them information they needed and found out that in fact completely different sensors were needed. This was called "Learning from Your Mistakes". When the topic is making candy bars so you don't lose money, and real-life weight and heft, perhaps it is easier.
But Ham68 is a social science, and how does it check its work? There is nothing magic about algorithms -- they are human artifacts, regardless of their effect on machines -- although many people's eyes glaze over when they hear the word. More critical assessment is needed -- algorithms, after all, gave us this wonder: the Google ranking system used to control debate in comments which has been roundly panned.
What Measures Success?
One of the ways funders judge a project like this is how many media hits it has -- or perhaps "in group citations" or something more wonky (which you can read about in the methodology). And this might increase, but might taper off. Unless the curators constantly churn new analytical essays that might get requoted, they might not keep up traffic. Media hits are chosen by funders because that presumably shows interest and influence. What a real measure of success would be, however, is the foiling of a Kremlin disinformation plot -- or at least the exposure of one. In my view, #FireMcMasters is not one, whatever its Kremlin elements.
Another measure would merely be the number of people who visit the site because they want to watch for the trending topics -- just to be on the qui vive, as it were, of what the Kremlin is up to. It just might be that you won't guess on your own -- or if you don't read Russian and don't have your Twitter location set to "Moscow" -- that Moscow's beloved propaganda topics will include "Irma" and "Steve Bannon".
By itself, it may not be a site that you would visit daily, but if a news story mentions it, people will come. Right now, it's traffic, according to Alexa, is good:
o Atlanticcouncil.org
Global rank 114,924 2,232
United States 47,792
o dashboard.securingdemocracy.org
Global 156,036
United States 42,138
Remember, what's important about Alexa isn't what it does in and of itself, which may be flawed and is always savagely criticized, but what's important is that you can use it as a yardstick of sorts to compare one site to another.
Unintended Consequence
The project's owners will do what they do, but for my money, the sites that it is showing that are NOT the obvious Russian agitprop sites are the ones to watch. Are they infected? Or are they always super critical of Trump and thus always going to be fodder for alt-right and the Kremlin? What about a relatively unknown site like Tsarizm -- good or bad? I haven't made up my mind yet because I haven't had time to research it. Why are certain mainstream sites always on the Dashboard, and others never on it? What's *different* about the way they cover a story that makes it click bait for Kremlin propagandists?
This section -- and these questions -- are an "unintended consequence" of the project perhaps -- and as I noted, the construction of the site is set up to fight you analyzing this regularly and easily. No matter. The question is what sites make the news -- real or fake -- that is retweeted, not the bots and fellow travellers who re-tweet them with an evil purpose or the innocent "organics" who believe what they may believe -- and perhaps could be persuaded by their fellow Americans to change.
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