Black Trolls Matter: Racial and Ideological Asymmetries in Social Media Disinformation

TLDR

The rise of disinformation on social media has prompted research into ideological asymmetries, with conservatives more likely to engage, while emerging evidence suggests race may also shape targeting and consumption. This study aims to examine whether racial presentation, particularly Black identity, influences disinformation engagement alongside ideological factors. The authors performed a computational analysis of 5.2 million tweets from the Russian troll farm Internet Research Agency to assess these effects. They found that Black‑presenting accounts were the strongest predictor of engagement, with stark differences across liberal, conservative, and Black left‑leaning accounts only apparent after disaggregating Black from non‑Black liberals, highlighting race’s central role in disinformation.

Abstract

The recent rise of disinformation and propaganda on social media has attracted strong interest from social scientists. Research on the topic has repeatedly observed ideological asymmetries in disinformation content and reception, wherein conservatives are more likely to view, redistribute, and believe such content. However, preliminary evidence has suggested that race may also play a substantial role in determining the targeting and consumption of disinformation content. Such racial asymmetries may exist alongside, or even instead of, ideological ones. Our computational analysis of 5.2 million tweets by the Russian government-funded “troll farm” known as the Internet Research Agency sheds light on these possibilities. We find stark differences in the numbers of unique accounts and tweets originating from ostensibly liberal, conservative, and Black left-leaning individuals. But diverging from prior empirical accounts, we find racial presentation—specifically, presenting as a Black activist—to be the most effective predictor of disinformation engagement by far. Importantly, these results could only be detected once we disaggregated Black-presenting accounts from non-Black liberal accounts. In addition to its contributions to the study of ideological asymmetry in disinformation content and reception, this study also underscores the general relevance of race to disinformation studies.