https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/09/in-the-united-states-russian-trolls-are-peddling-measles-disinformation-on-twitter/
How Russia Sows Confusion in the U.S. Vaccine Debate
Not content to cause political problems, Moscow’s trolls are also undermining public health.
By Katherine Kirk | April 9, 2019, 2:48 PM
In recent weeks, public health officials and state legislators have scrambled to combat new cases of measles across the United States. By April 4, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had already reported 465 cases of the disease, more than the total for all of 2018.
Measles is concerning in its own right. Aside from the discomfort it causes, in 25 percent of cases people who get measles are hospitalized. But an overlooked detail adds another layer to the threat. In the United States, measles has a surprising booster: Russian trolls and bots.
The existence of a Russian disinformation campaign that could make Americans hesitant to vaccinate their children highlights something important about the Kremlin’s information war on the United States. Moscow’s goal has never been to advantage Republicans or Democrats. Instead, it is after a far bigger prize: the exacerbation of Americans’ distrust of one another and, in turn, the erosion of their confidence in society and the U.S. government.
A recent study from David Broniatowski, a professor at George Washington University, and his co-authors found that thousands of Russian accounts used to spread disinformation had seized on anti-vaccine messaging.
After combing through nearly 2 million tweets recorded between 2014 and 2017, the researchers found that Russian troll accounts were significantly more likely to tweet about vaccination than general Twitter users. They had turned to vaccines as a wedge issue in an effort to ramp up social discord, erode trust in public health institutions, and exacerbate fear and division in the United States.
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