As the end of the year approaches, social media is flooding with inspirational memes and messages.

But have you ever thought about who is creating these messages? If not, Clemson University researchers suggest you start considering who is posting the content you share online and why.

Many of these inspirational posts are part of the latest attempt from Russia to sow discord and discontent among Americans ahead of the 2020 presidential election, researchers say.

Two researchers at Clemson — Darren Linvill, associate professor of communication, and Patrick Warren, associate professor of economics — have studied the strategy and tactics of professional trolls.

The duo has looked at the methods of Russia’s former Internet Research Agency, which has been absorbed by the country’s Federal News Agency.

“It's not a drunk teenager in the basement. It's really more like a Russian Don Draper,” Linvill says. “It's an ongoing guerrilla marketing campaign. These are professionals. They know what they're doing and they're really good at their job.”

Americans shouldn’t count on the Department of Justice to stop Russian trolls, Warren says.

People are starting to understand that they need to question whether the information they read on social media is true, but he says that’s not enough to stop trolls from gaining influence.

To stop trolls from exploiting existing tensions in American society, he says people need to question why we’re seeing certain messages and the consequences of sharing them before hitting retweet.

“I think that there's a lot that you can do,” Warren says. “If you're mindful of the origins of the information you're sharing, it can make a big difference.”

Interview Highlights

On how trolls gain influence and the Russian troll Twitter account @IamTyraJackson

Warren: “These trolls, they go through kind of a life cycle. And the first step in that life cycle is to introduce themselves. There's some community out there they're trying to become a part of in order to try to influence the members of that community. And so the way you introduce yourself is you'd post something that people in that community are going to find interesting. They're going to be likely to share in order to then use that sort of clout that you've built within that community later on. And that account actually didn't get that far. They were shut down before that happened.”

Linvill: “These Russian trolls, they don't work to antagonize people like one might think. They're entrenching people in ideology, not working to change ideology.”

On successful Russian troll Twitter account @PoliteMelanie

Linvill: “@PoliteMelanie built a brand. We saw her appear routinely in mainstream media. She was on CNN and Al Jazeera in posts online, and she even won the Chicago Tribune's Tweet of the Week back in October of 2018 that was voted on by Chicago Tribune's readers. And she often talked about important issues that Americans genuinely need to be talking about related to the Black Lives Matter movement and the #MeToo movement. But she would always frame these issues in particularly divisive ways. For instance, she and her friends encourage real Americans to go and find people. They might post a video with a very real incident of racism and they might advertise a phone number and certainly a name and encourage their followers to take action and possibly even violent action.”