As the news broke of a school shooting in Parkland, Fla., on Wednesday, hundreds of Twitter accounts believed to be under Russian sway pivoted. Many had been tweeting about places like Syria and Ukraine[...] Suddenly the accounts shifted to hashtags like #guncontrol, #guncontrolnow and #gunreformnow. Tweets mentioning Nikolas Cruz, the name of the shooting suspect, spiked.
For Bret Schafer, an analyst with
Hamilton 68, a site tracking Russian influence on Twitter, the pattern is becoming all too familiar. Hamilton 68 follows 600 accounts run by the Russian government, Russian trolls, bots[...] Data collected by the site over the past few months suggests that Russian social media accounts are now regularly seizing on divisive or tragic news to rile up segments of American society.
"The Kremlin doesn't care about gun control in America, they have no skin in this game," Schafer says. Accordingly, some accounts tracked by Hamilton 68 spew extreme, pro-gun rhetoric. Others attack the National Rifle Association. "By taking an extreme hyper-partisan position, it just serves to further rip us apart," Schafer says.
