Is It Propaganda Or Not?

On March 24th, as the Congressional investigation into Trump's ties to Putin kept acquiring momentum, we received an unexpected boon: A Twitter account going by @KevinK_2012, and claiming to be from Westerly, Rhode Island, left its geotagging on - thus locating the origin of its tweets in Saratov, Russia. At this time it has geotagged tweets still up.


First highlighted by the astute Grant Goodale, this mistake on the part of the account's operators presents an opportunity to analyze the content of a Russian propaganda troll account that accidentally blew its own cover. From this, we can get a sense for the kinds of messages the Russian intelligence/propaganda apparatus seeks to convey to American audiences, the fake news that Russian propaganda spreads, the actions they want to dupe Americans into taking, and the outcomes they would like to see happen.

First, though, some background: Russia has been known to spread propaganda via "troll farms" of paid content creators, using social media, "fake news" and other kinds of websites, YouTube channels, recruited/coopted agents in the West, etc, to manipulate public discourse and pursue its strategic objectives. This famous analysis of the infamous "Internet Research Agency" provides good context:

The Internet Research Agency [...] had become known for employing hundreds of Russians to post pro-Kremlin propaganda online under fake identities, including on Twitter, in order to create the illusion of a massive army of supporters; it has often been called a “troll farm.”

Since then, much related research has been done, including Trolling for Trump: How Russia Is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy by a team of researchers at FPRI, and our own Black Friday Report On Russian Propaganda Network Mapping (both of which have held up very well in retrospect!). Joel Harding has done excellent work describing the organizational structure of Russia's propaganda bureaucracy, the New Yorker has laid out the Kremlin's larger motivations and strategy in their war on liberal democracies around the world, a famous dossier describing Trump's "deal" with Russia has been vindicated as accurate time and again, multiple investigations have been probing the Trump administration's collusion with Russia to sabotage the 2016 election, and Congress has begin investigating how Russia used extremist pro-Trump websites like Infowars and Breitbart to target "fake news" propaganda at the American people, among many other developments.

The scandal of "Kremlingate" - Trump's corruption by and collusion with Russian intelligence - is just getting started.

However, Russian propaganda continues its attempts to deny, confuse, justify, or distract from Russian military and intelligence operations around the world, especially their covert support of the Trump administration. Thanks to the Russian operators of the @KevinK_2012 propaganda account blowing their cover by leaving geotagging on, we have new insight into their operations.

Let's start with the location and account description:

The @KevinK_2012 account claims to be an American from Westerly, Rhode Island in its profile, but after leaving geotagging on, Twitter attributes the origin of many of its tweets to Saratov, Russia. There is no obvious reason to suspect that Twitter's geolocation is inaccurate, and leaving it on is an easy mistake for a Russian propagandist pretending to be an American to make. There is no previous reporting into Russian propaganda troll-farm activity originating in Saratov, but it's a city of around a million people, so it's not surprising as a location for such operations.

Russian propaganda operations often work through contractors, so can be located almost anywhere, and widely vary in competence and technical skill. Russia also frequently outsources their propaganda-creation efforts to allies and coopted agents in target countries or third countries, in order to create deniability. The Saratov location is a reasonable location for such troll-farm contractors.

Because it is a Russian propaganda account pretending to be an American, the KevinK_2012 account counts as "black propaganda": A systematic form of persuasion, purporting to be from someone it is not, that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for political, ideological, and religious purposes, through the controlled transmission of deceptive, selectively-omitting, and one-sided messages.

The content of the account itself is especially worthy of direct scrutiny, and is telling, because it gives us a sense for the kinds of messages the Russian intelligence/propaganda apparatus seeks to convey to American audiences, the fake news Russian propaganda spreads, the actions they want to dupe Americans into taking, and the outcomes they would like to see happen.

For example, Russia would like to see Trey Gowdy (R-SC), become Director of the FBI. We know this because this known Russian propaganda account is advocating for it:


That indicates that the Russian state and intelligence services would love to see Trey Gowdy replace James Comey as FBI Director, presumably because he would not effectively investigate Trump's collusion with Russia. It also indicates that Gowdy may himself by compromised by Russian intelligence, whether through cooption or blackmail, and should immediately recuse himself from all related investigations and submit to counterintelligence investigation.

There is much more we can glean. For example, Russia wants to stir up ethnosectarian hatred against Muslim people in the United States. We know this because this known Russian propaganda account is trying to do so:



In doing so, this Russian propaganda account is spreading "fake news" - deliberately inaccurate information. The Pew Research Center has examined this in some detail:

Muslims around the world strongly reject violence in the name of Islam. Asked specifically about suicide bombing, clear majorities in most countries say such acts are rarely or never justified as a means of defending Islam from its enemies...  

In fact, the Russian intelligence services (with their allies, like Bashar al-Assad in Syria) help create and continue to strategically support extremist terrorist groups like ISIL and the Taliban. The Russian intelligence services have supported terrorism since the height of the Cold War, and there's no reason to think they stopped. However, and at the same time, Russian propaganda like the KevinK_2012 account stirs up internal strife in the West, using fake news to blame all Muslim people for the very problem Russia is helping create!

Further, Russia hates attempts to help refugees and promotes internal conflict surrounding them. We know this because this Russian propaganda account is trying to do so:



Here, Russian propaganda is piggybacking off mainstream U.S. media (the Wall Street Journal) in order to frame attempts to help refugees as a zero-sum conflict with U.S. military veterans. It is attempting to create division within the U.S. by promoting the narrative that "refugees are taking our jobs", which directly parallels Russian attempts to use refugees as a political wedge and incite division in Europe.

Russian propaganda is still trying to hype the "Clinton email server" non-story, and focus investigatory attention away from Trump and onto Hillary Clinton. We know this because this Russian propaganda account is still trying to do so:



Here, Russian propaganda is piggybacking off Charlie Kirk, the founder of a major conservative activist group, Turning Point USA, in order to refocus attention on Russia's U.S. opponents, and distract from the very warranted investigation into Trump's ties to Russia.

This takes a similar approach:



Different kinds of Russian propaganda amplify and feed off each other. We know this because this Russian propaganda account provides an excellent example of them doing so:



Here, a "black" Russian propaganda account (deniable, trying to pretend to be an American) comments on and amplifies a narrative being spread by one of Russia's largest "light gray" (state-sponsored but pretending to be independent) propaganda outlets, Russia Today. The narrative it uses attempts to discredit Adam Schiff, the ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, and negatively associate him with Hillary Clinton.

Russian propaganda hates "globalists", and wants Americans to think that "liberals and globalists" support terrorism, Muslim people cannot assimilate into the West, and Islam forbids doing so. We know this because this Russian propaganda account provides an excellent example of them doing so:



Here, Russian propaganda uses the term "globalists", which (as we mentioned in our report) Russian propaganda has long used as a derogatory scare-word (instead of "globalization"), in an attempt to demonize what has been largely seen in the West as a relatively secular process resulting from increasingly efficient global communications and transportation. Russian propaganda denigrates liberalism, writ large, in keeping with the Kremlin's fascist ideology (which they pretend they don't have). Russian propaganda insists that Muslims cannot integrate into the West, ignoring how, especially in the U.S. they actually do a great job of integrating and assimilating into the fabric of American life. Russian propaganda also frequently insists that Islam "forbids Muslims from assimilating", which is simply fake news.

Russia is using propaganda to fight a populist revolutionary war against liberal democracy. This one requires a little explanation:



Here, Russian propaganda is laying out the terms of the war they're fighting, using ideological language that they think will appeal to their audience in this particular case. The primary objective is to demonize liberal democracy by associating it with "corporatism" and "globalism", and they advocate for its "populist" overthrow using whatever justification seems appropriate at the time. To Russian propaganda, "socialism" and "capitalism" are essentially interchangeable terms, and they'll advocate for "socialism" while targeting left-leaning audiences, and for "capitalism" when targeting right-leaning ones.

Here they do it again:



This Russian propaganda account's use of "Woke Up World" is interesting, and warrants further investigation. Whoever produces and spreads those memes is, knowingly or not, acting as a propagandist for Vladimir Putin, the most brutally corrupt dictator in the world.

Russian propaganda constantly seeks to discredit actual journalism. We know this because this Russian propaganda account provides an excellent example of them doing so:



Here, Russian propaganda is using a meme from collectiveevolution.com in order to create the impression that actual journalism is trying to "enslave" its audience. The objective is to confuse public opinion, encourage paranoia and passivity, and distract American audiences away from relying on actually-accurate journalism - and supplant actually-accurate journalism with Russian propaganda.

This Russian propaganda account's use of content from collectiveevolution.com is interesting, and warrants further investigation. Whoever produces and spreads such content is, knowingly or not, acting as a propagandist for Vladimir Putin, the most brutally corrupt dictator in the world. We have listed collectiveevolution.com as a Russian propaganda outlet for related reasons.

More generally, any time a particular outlet consistently, uncritically, and one-sidedly echoes, repeats, gets used by, or refers its audiences to Russian propaganda (especially Russian (semi-)official state media), then it is acting as an outlet for Russian propaganda itself, and should be treated accordingly.

All of the above examples are from just the last 24 hours. The timeline of the KevinK_2012 account  contains numerous similarly telling examples of Russian propaganda, and we encourage all concerned to investigate it for themselves, using a critical eye and whatever technical forensics tools you have available. Because we expect that account to start deleting tweets, we have mirrored them all in a spreadsheet for later analysis, along with a spreadsheet of the propaganda account's followers.

In conclusion, this a rough-and-ready analysis of just one, out of literally millions, of Russian propaganda Twitter accounts, websites, YouTube channels, Facebook pages and accounts, etc. It is probably partially automated, and its operator almost certainly runs hundreds of parallel accounts, repeating similar messages in various guises to audiences targeted by Russian intelligence for indoctrination.

We know about how this works in part because courageous Western journalists (and comedians!) have actually interviewed some of the Russian propagandists doing this:


As the investigation of Trump's treachery with Russia closes in on him and his henchmen, we expect Russian propaganda to increase in volume accordingly, along with Russian intelligence use of other "active measures" - including bribery, intimidation, cyberespionage, and even assassination and terrorism.

We encourage all concerned to share this article, read our report, get news from actual journalists, organize locally, and creatively oppose Trump/Putin using all legal means! Also, please follow us on Twitter, at @PropOrNot, and on Facebook. Feel free to get in touch by email at (our domain)@gmail.com, and watch this space - we won't stop fighting this.

Sincerely,

-- The PropOrNot Team

In the short time since we started this project, we have been approached by whistleblowers leaking documents, laid the groundwork for collaboration with other researchers, and received an immense outpouring of support, constructive suggestions, offers to contribute, and volunteer applications.  Our approach has been successfully used by people around the world to critically examine online propaganda outlets and expose the pro-Russian bias, lies, and uncritical reuse of state-controlled media therein. Operators of sites we have highlighted have reached out to us, made a case for their independence, described how they take state-sponsored propaganda very seriously, and put measures in place to avoid being a conduit for it. We are very encouraged by that. We have removed these outlets from our list, and are continuing to add other ones, especially ones which are directly owned and controlled by governments that suppress and restrict free media.

Reporters have investigated some of the outlets we highlighted and found them to be foreign-run, popular, and supportive of Russia in important ways. Some reporters in particular have engaged with our work in its larger context to produce thoughtful analysis. Allied governments and intelligence services, including those of Germany and Sweden, are well aware of the phenomena we highlight and take it very seriously. We have accomplished these things in a very short time, with no budget and no formal organization, by building on the work of numerous others who have paved the way.

We have been strongly criticized as well. Journalists and other researchers have made some thoughtful critiques and pointed out the need for certain improvements that we take seriously. Some have questioned our anonymity, but we will remain anonymous for the reasons which we laid out at the start of this project, in our Frequently Asked Questions: We are anonymous because we are civilian Davids facing down a state-sponsored Goliath. We take things like Russian hacking of Americans, Russian physical attacks on journalists, “Pizzagate”-style mob harassment, and doxing and harassment seriously.

We would also like to be clear: We strongly believe in the First Amendment rights to freedom of expression and freedom of the press. Diverse and independent media are vital to the health of free society. Non-profit and commercial, alternative and mainstream - all are critical to our democracy.

Americans have the right to echo, repeat, be used by, and refer their audiences to Russian official and semi-official state media, including “fake news” propaganda - just as we have the right to analyze and highlight that, without fear or favor. Our list was never intended to be “black”. We highlight these outlets because we believe that the public should be able to know that very disparate kinds of online outlets frequently display a strong bias towards Russia in ways that echo, repeat, are used by, and redirect their audiences to Russian official and semi-official state media. We also highlight them to encourage readers to think critically about the media they encounter, especially when it might confirm their ideological preconceptions.

We highlight. Unlike the Russian government, we do not censor.

As an example, we are happy to remove from the List any outlet whose operators understand how Putin's Russia is a brutal authoritarian kleptocracy that uses "fake news" as online propaganda, and resolves to help do something about it. For example, any outlet that has used a lot of Russia Today and Sputnik News content, but resolves to stop doing so, is going to be removed from the List.

After productive conversations with several website operators, in which it became clear that they shared the same concerns we do and were interested in constructively moving forward, we removed them. Please see the updated List for more information.

Also please see our November 30 Press release, which goes into more detail on the themes above, is available for download here, and can be viewed inline below:

We are grateful for the outpouring of support we've received over the past day or so, and are currently starting to wade through it all, as well as working to map out and analyze all the outraged accounts who jump in randomly to tell us how great Putin is and decry the very suggestion that Russian influence operations might actually be a real thing.

We are also amused by everyone who wants to change the subject. We have been writing code, collecting data, analyzing data, manually reviewing outlets, responding to media, drafting, editing, internally debating, etc, with a team of volunteers, on a holiday weekend, and it is working. We have helped start the conversation we wanted to start, and greatly increased awareness of the problem we are trying to address. There remains much more to do, but we look forward to the upcoming public discussion, and intend to respond to questions and requests for more information as soon as humanely possible - again, bearing in mind that we are an all-volunteer team, with no budget, on a holiday weekend.

We would also like to be very clear that we fiercely believe in the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of the press, and have no interest in seeing anyone punished for exercising them. Quite to the contrary. However, when outlets echo, repeat, and refer their audience to Russian propaganda, especially of the fake-news variety (which they have the right to do), we're going to highlight it (which we have the right to do). If they in fact were not doing so, and we were incorrect, we are happy to correct the record. We highlight. We do not censor.

Our criteria are behavioral, not motivational. If a particular outlet consistently echoes, repeats, and refers its audience to official and semi-official Russian state media, we will to try to measure it. We often cannot know the motivations of the people involved, although sometimes, thanks to other reporting, we can have have a very good sense - but the motivations are less important to us than the behavior.  That's one big reason why we don't accuse any Americans of deliberate wrongdoing, and why we so generally focus on outlets, not individuals.

More generally, we would like to point out that propaganda outlets like Russia Today are the mouthpieces of a brutal authoritarian oligarchy run by a mafia-spy tyrant, who assassinated a leading opposition politician literally right in front of the Kremlin, and strategically supports and funds political movements around the world. There is no moral equivalence between the United States and the Putin regime. Everyone has the right to criticize the US government, but criticizing the Russian government can get you killed. That is one reason we're anonymous.

There are a few other points of interest as well:

1. We have updated and will continue to update our Frequently Asked Questions in response to some of the most common inquiries we've received, although we intend to get back to everyone as soon as possible as well. Watch that space.
2. We will be updating The List slightly as well, in part based on the numerous new outlets we've been asked to look into over the past 24 hours. We will do that as soon as we can sink our analysis tools and review processes into the outlets we've been asked to look into, and we'll be updating our browser plugin as well. Due to different volunteers being responsible for different parts of the option, please note that the list in the plugin is slightly ahead of the list on the website. We will fix that.
3. We are updating our homepage slightly, to give people a better sense for what the Russian folks working to influence US public opinion look and sound like.
4. We are proud to present our updated Black Friday Report, and extremely grateful to everyone who contributed! We look forward to your thoughts, suggestions, and contributions as we move forward. It is available for download here, or can be reivewed directly below:

Thank you very much for all your support, and watch this space - much more soon.

-- The PropOrNot Team

In order to illustrate the process of manually identifying Russian propaganda as described in the YYYcampaignYYY, let's walk through the process of evaluating an excellent case study, which was itself discovered through manual analysis. This story provides a great example, from HangTheBankers.com:

World War III!!!

On the surface, HangTheBankers.com appears to be an American website about "hanging the bankers", but it extensively quotes the Russian defense ministry and Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, includes a Russia Today video in the main body of the story (and no video from any other source), and copies and pastes text such as "The plane reportedly crashed in a village mostly populated by Syrian Turkmen. The place has been a hotspot between the opposition and the Syrian Army" directly from rt.com, here, while obscuring the fact that its content is from Russia Today by using a link that just says "SOURCE". In fact, the entire article is copy-and-pasted directly from Russia Today:

This is from HangTheBankers.com

This is from rt.com (Russia Today)

That meets the criteria outlined in manual Russian-propaganda analysis Checks #1 (consistently cites obvious Russian propaganda outlets) and #2 (has a history of reusing text directly from obvious Russian propaganda outlets, especially with minimal attribution). But what about Check #3, checking to see whether the site has a history of generally echoing the Russian line?

Sure enough: Some quick searching demonstrates how HangTheBankers.com has been echoing Russian propaganda content and themes for years. This is some vintage anti-Euro propaganda, from HangTheBankers.com in 2012:

Anti-Euro propaganda from 2012

This fits with what we know of parallel Russian efforts: Their intelligence services no doubt started investing in efforts to break up the EU and Eurozone quite some time previously, but it is interesting for them to suggest they have a timeline! And what exactly was the length of their supposed "countdown" to the "break up of the Euro" - what date exactly was it supposedly counting down to? Considering that article appeared in May 2012, shouldn't it have happened already?

But what about in 2013? It is not difficult to find great examples. Here is some anti-actual-media propaganda, from HangTheBankers.com in 2013:

Anti-actual-media propaganda from 2013

Mainstream media may be in bad shape, but that probably has something to do with the way that the Russian intelligence services are investing a lot in efforts to kill it off - efforts like, for, example, the HangTheBankers.com site that story appears on...

But what about in 2014? It doesn't take long to find great examples. Here is a textbook case of Russia-is-just-a-poor-innocent-victim nonsense, from HangTheBankers.com in 2014:

Russia-is-an-innocent-victim propaganda from 2014

Nevermind the opinions of Syrians in Aleppo, Tatars in Crimea, Ukrainians in Mariupol, or Latvians in Riga - for HangTheBankers.com it's poor innocent Russia that's being "targeted"! And nevermind that the West and the USSR survived a generations-long Cold War without starting anything like World War III - Putin does not want anybody organizing against him, so his propagandists trot out the prospect of global thermonuclear war as a rebuttal to anyone even considering fighting back. It's simple intimidation.

But what about in 2015? It doesn't take long to find this attempt to gin up opposition to US military exercises, from HangTheBankers.com in 2015:

Anti-US-military-exercise propaganda from 2015

Nevermind that the US was preparing to do things like, for example, kick Russia out of Estonia on the off-chance Putin saw fit to invade there... Nevermind all that! For Russian propaganda, US military exercises are evil conspiracies to be opposed. The darkly humorous subtext here is that that particular Russian influence operation, to gin up opposition to Jade Helm, sort of worked - significant fractions of the Republican base, and even Republican elected officials, fell for it. Imagine the Russian intelligence officers laughing to themselves about that one on their way home from work!

But what about from 2016? Again, it doesn't take long. Here's some US-is-an-evil-aggressor propaganda, from HangTheBankers.com in 2016:

US-is-evil-and-aggressive propaganda, from HangTheBankers.com in 2016

Nevermind that that the US military paints aircraft in Russian colors for training purposes, in order to, again, practice for stuff like kicking the Russian military out of Estonia on the off-chance Putin sees fit to invade there. HangTheBankers.com doesn't waver, or equivocate, or need alternative explanations. No, for HangTheBankers.com, the appropriate headline is to assert that those US fighter jets are painted in Russian colors in a "push" for a "false flag" to start World War III.

More generally, HangTheBankers.com echoes the larger themes of Russian propaganda to a T:

'The manifesto of the movement [the World National Conservative Movement] claims that the world is governed by the ideology of "liberalism, multiculturalism and tolerance". This, in the view of the activists, results in "the erosion of nations, massive migration from countries with foreign civilizational bases, falling away from religion, replacement of spirituality by materialism, impoverishment of cultures, destruction of the family and healthy moral values" through "abortion, propaganda of debauchery and acceptance of sexual perversions." Furthermore, the manifesto refers to the "super-national institutions" such as the EU and NATO, and argues that these forces represent "the global cabal" which, in the Russian cultural discourse, is essentially a euphemistic reference to the global Jewish conspiracy. The WNCM aims to counter liberalism and globalisation by staging a "conservative revolution" and bringing far right parties to power in Western societies. The manifesto claims that a "victory of the conservative revolution even in one country [...] will provide an example for other countries." Establishing the WNCMis considered the first step in this direction.'

-- Russian Politicians Building an International Extreme Right Alliance, by Anton Shekhovtsov, on September 15 2015, in The Interpreter Magazine

So, we have satisfied Check #1 (citing obvious Russian propaganda),  Check #2 (has a history of reusing text directly from obvious Russian propaganda), and Check #3 (has a history of generally echoing the Russian propaganda "line"), but what about Check #4, has a history of echoing the Russian line in weird ways?

To answer Check #4, let's step back a bit: What do Turkey shooting down a Russian fighter-bomber, dire predictions about the breakup of the Euro, the death of actual journalism, or Russia supposedly being targeted by "false flag" attacks to start WW3, have to do with "hanging the bankers"?

What does any of that have to do with it?

Obviously, not much.

There is plenty of room for reasonable debate about appropriate regulation of the financial system, including criminal penalties for bank and financial-industry executives who, for example, may have broken the law in connection to the Great Recession of 2008. That's a practical, real-world concerns, and it makes sense that there would be media outlets, blogs, and online communities dedicated to discussing it--but that's not what HangTheBankers.com is, at all.

Its About page barely even mentions banking, let alone financial regulatory reform. It discusses the "New World Order", "rabbit holes", "red pills", the "corporate mainstream media", and an out-of-context quote from John F. Kennedy. The closest it comes to discussing banking is mentioning "a handful of families that control the world banking system and hence the money supply", although it doesn't say which families--a dog-whistle to a blatantly anti-Semitic trope, used with increasing frequency by Russian propaganda.

Instead of focusing on issues like financial regulation, HangTheBankers.com has a history of echoing Russian propaganda in ways that are, indeed, weird. Its actual subject matter--including Turkey shooting down a Russian fighter-bomber, dire predictions about the breakup of the Euro, the death of actual journalism, Russia supposedly being targeted by "false flag" attacks to start WW3--is unrelated to the purported focus of its branding: Punishing white-collar crime associated with the Great Recession of 2008. That satisfies Check #4.

Check #5 is about whether HangTheBankers.com lacks the hallmarks of good actual journalism: Are the stories factual? Are the facts placed in appropriate context? Do the headlines match the content? Are the agendas of the sources clearly disclosed? Are there good explanations? Does it bring clarity to complicated issues? Is there an absence of hype?

A cursory review of the content answers those and related questions: No.

That satisfies Check #5.

Check #6 is about whether HangTheBankers.com has been called out by other fact-checkers, journalists, and debunkers already. A little double-checking reveals that HangTheBankers.com has been identified as a "CLICKBAIT WEBSITE" by FakeNewsWatch.com, is included in the FortLiberty.com Hoax Sites list, and is the subject of an interesting analysis of its use of visual imagery published by the International Center of Photography, titled CONSPIRACY THEORY 2.0: Photographic practices on conspiracy theory websites following the Boston Marathon bombing.

That satisfies Check #6.

Check #7 is is about whether HangTheBankers.com steadfastly avoids coherently proposing constructive solutions to anything. Its most heavily-emphasized prescription, "hanging the bankers", might perhaps qualify as a Step One towards a constructive solution to a wide range of problems, for resolute Marxists, but like Marx, HangTheBankers.com does not go into much detail about Steps Two, Three, Four, or Five through Nine.

The same applies for the other stories highlighted here. What's the solution to the pressures on the Euro as a currency? Well, the story on HangTheBankers.com from 2012 has nothing to say about that. It certainly does not consult relevant expertise to determine what possible solutions might look like, or list out the problems associated with a potential breakup of the Eurozone, let alone the possible solutions to them. On the contrary, in this story, HangTheBankers.com seems more like a cheerleader for the breakup of the Euro than anything else, which makes sense in light of Russia's strategic interest in seeing that happen.

The same applies to HangTheBankers.com sounding the death knell for actual journalism in 2013. What solutions does HangTheBankers.com propose? None. It links to a YouTube video which badly critiques actual professional journalism, and actual professional journalists. What about Russia supposedly being the innocent victim of "targeting" for World War III? Nothing. Jade Helm? Nada. The US military practicing against simulated Russian aircraft? Zip. In many cases, no constructive solution can be articulated, because the supposed "problem" is so incoherent.

That satisfies Check #7.

Conclusion: YYYhangthebankers.comYYY

Given that it satisfies those checks, thus qualifying as a bona-fide Russian propaganda outlet, what can be done? For one, you can help highlight it. When you see a story posted from it on social media, that we've already analyzed and debunked, surround the name of it in YYYs, and, as kindly as possible, push back against the person who posted it with a link to this page... And then tell us, at PropOrNot, about it. For example:

@uninformed_relative: Can you belief there doing this stuff!??? http://www.hangthebankers.com/ww3-globalists-pushing-war-russia/
@you_our_enlightened_reader: Oh my dear relative, I love you, but just so you know, YYYhangthebankers.comYYY has been debunked by PropOrNot, and is totally Russian propaganda #propornot
@uninformed_relative: Wowww what next!? Wonders never cease
@you_our_enlightened_reader: <smug satisfaction>
@us_at_propornot: Hmmmm look at those metrics! Yay!
@vladimir_putin: эти чертовы ублюдки все планы мне сорвали!! And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling kids!!

Executive Summary: Russia’s attempts to influence the US election via hacking and selectively leaking sensitive US government and political data are not being conducted in isolation. They are accompanied by large-scale and long-term efforts to build online propaganda outlets with significant audiences in the US, which we estimate to number in the tens of millions of Americans. 

Thus far we at PropOrNot have identified over 200 distinct websites which qualify as Russian propaganda outlets according to our criteria, and target audiences in the United States. We estimate the regular US audiences of these sites to number in the tens of millions. We are gathering data to measure that more precisely, but we are confidant that it includes at least 15 million Americans. 

The messaging used by these Russian propaganda outlets seems intended to confuse public opinion, encourage paranoia, distract American audiences away from relying on actually-accurate journalism, and influence the upcoming US election, while blunting opposition to and strengthening popular support for Russian strategic priorities - and even going so far as to lay the groundwork for, in the immediate aftermath of the upcoming election, Russian-orchestrated political violence in the US.

We at PropOrNot do not reach our conclusions lightly. We have arrived at them after systematically employing a combination of manual and automated analysis of open-source non-classified information, and building on the work of other researchers and journalists, in order to map out a related collection of websites, social media, video, and other outlets, which:

1. Include official state-owned and semi-official Russian propaganda outlets, such as RT, Sputnik News, Russia Insider, etc.;
2. Consistently cite official state-owned and semi-official Russian propaganda outlets, including the Russian defense ministry and other official spokespeople, etc.;
3. Consistently reuse text directly from official state-owned and semi-official Russian propaganda outlets and government spokespeople, often with minimal or no attribution;
4. Have a history of generally echoing the Russian propaganda "line", by using themes, arguments, talking points, images, and other content similar to those used by official state-owned and semi-official Russian propaganda outlets;
5. Have a history of echoing the Russian propaganda "line" in ways unrelated to the purported focus of their branding, and in sequence with (at the same time as, or shortly after) official state-owned and semi-official Russian propaganda outlets;
6. Qualify as propaganda under a rigorous definition: “A systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specific target audiences for political, ideological, and religious purposes, through the controlled transmission of deceptive, selectively-omitting, and one-sided messages (which may or may not be factual) via mass and direct media channels”;
7. Have in many cases already been called out by other fact-checkers, researchers, journalists, debunkers, etc.;
8. Share technical “tells”, such as Google Analytics IDs, Amazon affiliate codes, WHOIS data, hosting data, ad-network utilization, SEO techniques, etc., in some cases implicating direct Russian involvement;
9. Refer their audiences to each other, via hyperlinks and other means, at disproportionately high rates;
10. Are consistently visited by the same audiences, both directly and via search, demonstrating that those intra-network referrals build “brand loyalty” in their audiences over time;
11. Are consistently visited by their audiences after searches for terms which congrue with the Russian propaganda “line”, and are unrelated to the purported focus of their branding; 
12. Are categorized as "similar sites" by automated services in spite of their purportedly distinct focuses;
13. Have content characterized by automated services in ways that are consistently very different from their purported subjects, but align with the Russian propaganda “line”;
14. Have content aligning with the “Eurasianist” philosophy of Alexander Dugin;
15. Include specialized sites targeted at a wide range of audiences, including US military veterans, Wall St. finance types, environmentalists, peace activists, racists, conspiracy theorists, political junkies, etc.;
16. Appear to be effectively influencing public opinion in significant and very problematic ways, by promoting:
• Conspiracy theories about and protests against US military exercises,
• Isolationism/anti-interventionism generally, 
• Support for policies like Brexit, and the breakup of the EU and Eurozone,
• Opposition to Ukrainian resistance to Russia and Syrian resistance to Assad,
• Support for the anti-vax, anti-Zika spraying, anti-GMO, 9/11-”truther”, gold-standard, and other related movements;
17. Have extremely large audiences in the US, such that tens of millions of people appear to use them as primary “news” sources, supplanting actual journalism;
18. Appear to be part of a larger “active measures”-style Russian influence operation, which also includes hacking and selectively leaking sensitive US government and political data, along with more-traditional espionage and military activity, intended to:
• Confuse public opinion, encourage paranoia and passivity, and distract American audiences away from relying on actually-accurate journalism,
• Blunt opposition to and strengthen popular support for Russian strategic priorities, 
• Influence the US election, and
• Lay the groundwork for orchestrated violence, in the immediate aftermath of the election, against the US government.

Please bear in mind that these characteristics of propaganda outlets are motivation-agnostic. It is not up to us to determine whether the sites we’ve identified are being knowingly directed and paid by Russian intelligence officers (although some of them almost certainly are), or whether the individuals involved even knew they were echoing Russian propaganda at any particular point: If the outlets meet criteria like the ones above, then they are echoing Russian propaganda, have effectively become tools of the Russian intelligence services, and are worthy of further investigation.

Please also note that it is possible that this being effectively addressed by the US government in ways we're unaware of yet, but we have done our due diligence, and this does not seem to be the case. We have had extensive conversations with national security professionals in the legislative branch, executive branch, active and retired, and to a person, none of them are aware of it being addressed by the national security apparatus.

On the contrary, we have been advised that the US government is deliberately and purposely not getting involved, and steering clear of this in order to avoid inadvertantly influencing domestic politics and our democratic process. This has backfired, creating a US government blind spot, and opening an opportunity for a foreign power to do exactly what our government is so carefully trying to avoid doing: Directly manipulate our democratic process.

Methodology

We use a combination of manual and automated analysis, including analysis of content, timing, technical indicators, and other reporting, in order to initially identify (“red-flag”) and then confirm an outlet as Russian propaganda. Our volunteers have developed a suite of software tools, leveraging publicly available data and commercial services, in order to perform automated analysis, but everything we do is in principle replicable using manual searching and data entry.

We initially red-flag a new site based on content-based criteria like those outlined above. Does it:

1. Consistently cite official state-owned and semi-official Russian propaganda outlets?
2. Consistently reuse text directly from official state-owned and semi-official Russian propaganda outlets?
3. Have a history of generally echoing the Russian propaganda "line", especially in ways unrelated to the purported focus of their branding, and in sequence with other Russian propaganda outlets?
4. Has it been called out by other fact-checkers, researchers, journalists, and debunkers for posting fake news?

From there we use our software tools to fill in the blanks, collecting a wide range of data about the new target site, and seeing how it fits into the existing network of previously red-flagged and identified outlets. We have built out a significant network of websites, and every time we feel confidant that we have discovered most of them, we keep finding more.

In the process of doing this, we have also identified a significant set of YouTube channels, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, etc, which are acting as part of the same larger Russian influence operation.

Preliminary Conclusions

Our initial findings include:

• There are well over 200 distinct websites which qualify as Russian propaganda outlets according to our criteria, and target audiences in the United States.
• We estimate the regular US audiences of these sites to number in the tens of millions. We are gathering data to measure that more precisely, but we are confidant that it includes at least 15 million Americans.
• We have yet to to analyze at least hundreds more websites, along with numerous more YouTube channels, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, etc.
• The US government is fully aware that this is the case.
• The US government has refrained from publicizing it, primarily to avoid interference in the domestic political process.
• However, this inaction has deprived the American public of information they need to vote in an informed manner, and allowed Russia to manipulate the US domestic political process and interfere in the 2016 election.