The Art of Disruption: RT’s Social Media Strategies

Previous research has highlighted how algorithms on social media platforms can be abused to disseminate disinformation and undermine democratic processes. However, less work has been devoted to understanding the interplay between Facebook news curation mechanisms and persuasive content of government-sponsored media. To address this gap, we analyze the activities of RT (formerly, Russia Today), an international news channel sponsored by Kremlin, in the context of the 2020 US Presidential Election on Facebook. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines agent-based algorithmic auditing and news framing analysis, we examine what content RT published on Facebook in the context of the elections and how it was algorithmically curated in Facebook News Feeds and Search Results. We find that RT’s strategic framing included the promotion of anti-Biden leaning content with an emphasis on anti-establishment narratives. However, due to algorithmic factors on Facebook,individual agents were exposed to eclectic RT content without an overarching narrative.Our findings contribute to the debate on computational propaganda by highlighting the ambiguous relationship between government-sponsored media and Facebook algorithmic curation which may decrease exposure of users to propaganda and at the same time increase confusion and misinformation