From Facebook to the Streets: Russian Troll Ads and Black Lives Matter Protests

Online trolling is typically studied in the IS literature as an uncoordinated, anarchic activity. Coordinated, strategic online frolling is not well understood despite its prevalence on social media. To shed light on this prevailing activity, the present study examines the proposition that coordinated online frolling is timed to leverage macro societal unrest. In testing this proposition, we analyzed the dynamics of the Russian State's coordinated frolling campaign against the United States beginning in 2015. Using the May 2018 release of all Russian Troll Facebook advertisements, this study constructs a topic model of the content of these ads. The relationship between ad topics and the frequency ofBlack Lives Matter protests is examined. We argue that the frequency of Black Lives Matter protests proxies for civil unrest and divisiveness in the United States. The studyfinds that Russian ads related to police brutality were issued to coincide with periods of higher unrest. This work also finds that during periods ofrelative calm (evidenced by lower frequency of protests) Russian ads were relatively innocuous.