RUSSIA 2020

Study: Fake News on Twitter Flooded Swing States That Trump Won

Content from Russia and WikiLeaks hit Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan.

Falsified news stories on social-media sites like Twitter flooded U.S. swing states ultimately won by President Trump—including Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan—in the days leading up Election Day last year, according to a study published by Oxford University on Thursday. In the hard-fought battleground states, the links in many cases emanated from Russian sources and WikiLeaks, the study showed. “Many people use these platforms to find news and information that shapes their political identities and voting behavior,” Samantha Bradshaw, a lead researcher at Oxford’s Computational Propaganda Project, told Mother Jones. “We know the Russians have... invested in social media,” she said. “Swing states would be the ones you would want to target.”