A study published Aug. 23 in the American Journal of Public Health suggests Russian trolls actively worked to influence the vaccine debate in the U.S. through Twitter, according to a CNN report.
While the study initially focused on observing the impacts of social media and survey data in peoples’ opinions and decision making regarding vaccines, researchers ultimately discovered what appeared to be automated accounts and Russian trolls — posing as real users — in the midst of a back-and-forth on vaccinations.
“We started looking at those tweets, and immediately, we were like, ‘These are kind of weird,'” George Washington University’s David Broniatowski, who was also the study’s lead author, told CNN. “One of the things about them that was weird was that they tried to — or they seemed to try to — relate vaccines to issues in American discourse, like racial disparities or class disparities that are not traditionally associated with vaccinations.”
