NPR:
Russia's information attack against the United States during the 2016 election cycle sought to take advantage of the greater trust that Americans tend to place in local news.
The information operatives who worked out of the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg not only sought to pose as American social media users or spread false information from purported news sources, according to new details.
They also created a number of Twitter accounts that posed as sources for Americans' hometown headlines.
NPR has reviewed information connected with the investigation and found 48 such accounts. They have names such as @ElPasoTopNews, @MilwaukeeVoice, @CamdenCityNews and @Seattle_Post.
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Another example: the Internet Research Agency created an account that looks like it is The Chicago Daily News. That newspaper shuttered in 1978.
The Internet Research Agency-linked account was created in May 2014, and for years it just posted local headlines, accumulating some 19,000 followers by July of 2016.
Another twist: These accounts apparently never spread misinformation. In fact, they posted real local news, serving as sleeper accounts building trust and readership for some future, unforeseen effort.
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Twitter caught these Internet Research Agency accounts in the act and suspended them.
The discovery and suspension of the local accounts suggests two things as investigators continue to build their understanding about Russia's campaign of active measures against the United States and the West.
First, that the Russian misinformation project was a years-long effort, one that wasn't simply focused on the 2016 election but on destabilizing the United States over an extended period of time.
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Second, the failed effort to create local news accounts also says something about how Americans trust local news sources more than national news — and how the Russians evidently knew about that vulnerability.
A Pew survey from 2016 found that 82 percent of Americans have "some," or "a lot" of confidence in local news organizations.
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"This effort is not over," said Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican on the Senate intelligence committee. "It continues to this very day, where the Russians are trying to sow the seeds of discontent in our society, take advantage of the polarization that exists.
Read More: Russian Influence Campaign Sought To Exploit Americans' Trust In Local News (NPR)