Young Mie Kim, two graduate student affiliates, and other researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison released a study that documents how unknown groups on Facebook targeted Americans with divisive political ads in the 2016 election.
In the first large-scale analysis of who ran political ads and who was targeted on Facebook leading up to 2016 presidential election, the researchers found that nearly half of all Facebook groups in the study either vanished or stopped purchasing ads shortly after November 8, 2016. In addition, no more information existed about these groups elsewhere, thereby indicating little evidence of legitimacy. Moreover, one in six of these unknown, divisive groups that they call “suspicious” turned out to be tied to Russia’s disinformation campaign
The entire paper can be read here.
Read the full article at: https://www.wired.com/story/russian-facebook-ads-targeted-us-voters-before-2016-election/