The Phantom Crowd: The Mid to Late 2010s: The Age of the IRA and SNS Operations.

The Phantom Crowd: The Mid to Late 2010s: The Age of the IRA and SNS Operations.

The rapid spread of social media in the 2010s set a new stage for democracy, but it also became a hotbed for the manipulation of public opinion. Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA) is emblematic of this trend, which began to take off around 2013. based in St. Petersburg, the IRA mobilized a staff of several hundred people to wage psychological warfare against U.S. society. They created fictional organizations such as "Heart of Texas" and "United Muslims of America" and used divisive themes such as immigration, religion, and racism to incite conflict on social networking sites. In some cases, the IRA transcribed cyberspace fictions into real-life clashes. In addition, the IRA used Facebook ads and fake profiles and geo-targeting to disseminate different messages to different targets, such as calling for a voting boycott among black voters and an anti-immigration rally among white conservative voters. This generated tens of millions of impressions, and an investigation by t
he U.S. Congress provided evidence. This was shortly after the Snowden affair exposed the reality of surveillance and at a time when the vulnerability of the information space was highlighted. While there are doubts about the directness of the impact of the research, the IRA's activities have driven home the reality that "information can be weaponized. This manipulation of Cold War-style propaganda warfare, reimagined through digital technology, became a symbol of the "invisible Cold War" that is shaking democracy in the 21st century.