Acting the Part: Examining Information Operations Within #BlackLivesMatter Discourse

Information campaigns that seek to tap into and manipulate online discussions are becoming an issue of increasing public concern. Social media companies are now problematizing some campaigns, specifically those that intentionally obscure their origins, as ‘information operations’. This research examines how social media accounts linked to one such operation—allegedly conducted by Russia’s Internet Research Agency—participated in an online discourse about the #BlackLivesMatter movement and police-related shootings in the U.S. during 2016. We study the interactions of these accounts within the online crowd using interpretative analysis of a network graph based on retweet flows in combination with a qualitative content analysis. Our empirical findings show how these accounts imitated ordinary users to systematically micro-target different audiences, foster antagonism and undermine trust in information intermediaries. Conceptually, this research enhances our understanding of how information operations can leverage the interactive social media environment to both reflect and shape existing social divisions.