Russian Trolls Responsible for Last Jedi Backlash, Claims Study

[Jor Kvall]

Original article.

Good news! While you might have thought The Last Jedi sucked, it actually didn't. If you thought so, your mind was probably under the influence of Russian trolls - or you are actually a Russian troll yourself.

Who knew?

Did Star Wars: The Last Jedi destroy the franchise and permanently rupture the fandom as its critics (melodramatically) have accused it of doing? According to a new academic paper by researcher Morten Bay, the answer is clearly no.


The paper, titled "Weaponizing the Haters: The Last Jedi and the Strategic Politicization of Pop Culture Through Social Media Manipulation," examines the online response to 2017's Last Jedi, a movie that has come to be considered controversial amongst the larger fanbase of the franchise.

Bay suggests that reputation may not be earned, and instead "finds evidence of deliberate, organized political influence measures disguised as fan arguments," as he writes in the paper's abstract. He continues, "The likely objective of these measures is increasing media coverage of the fandom conflict, thereby adding to and further propagating a narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society. Persuading voters of this narrative remains a strategic goal for the U.S. alt-right movement, as well as the Russian Federation."

Now you may be thinking, of course the Russian government would be hard at work trying to undermine American society by making fun of Star Wars, that makes perfect sense. But what was the study's methodology?

Tweets.

That's right, the paper analyzed a total of 967 tweets sent to Rian Johnson in the immediate aftermath of the movie's release, and found that a total of 201 were negative about the new movie. Based upon this completely sound and statistically reliable method for measuring fan's opinions, the paper identified 64 of those tweets as being "politically motivated", while 27 were possibly from "Russian trolls" and/or bots.

"Politically motivated" tweets were defined by anyone who tweeted negatively about TLJ while also tweeting positively about Trump and/or right-wing issues, which clearly makes their opinion irrelevant. That's all well and good, but now you're probably thinking, these 27 negative tweets is clearly evidence of the Russian government's dastardly plan to bring down America by saying bad things about Star Wars. But how do we know they were Russian?

According to the study: if the account was largely inactive and suddenly started tweeting, or tweeted during certain hours of the day, or lacked a profile picture, while also posting positively about Trump, this is clear evidence that they were likely to be Russian trolls with the sinister plot to destroy America.

Nice try, Putin!

 

[Kyyrk]

In not sure which is worse. The fact that this is here to be read, the fact I read it, or the fact someone will believe it...

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

The worst consequence of this is that Disney can ignore some of the very real criticisms people have by burying their head in the sand.
"The critics love us, the haters are just Russian bots, everything is fine!"

I don't doubt there were some Russian bots. But that rules out the other subset of fans posting videos on Youtube, forums like this or in person. What i can say is that a lot of more 'hardcore' (for want of a better term) fans did not like it, and they are the main cashcow.

But nope, all Russian trolls.

Very annoying.

 

[Darth Carnifex]

Sounds like the OP didn't read the original PDF file, or glossed over it and didn't really dive deep into the pertinent details.

 

[Tathra Khaeus]

Oh boy. The lengths some groups go to, to simply spout such nonsense.

Yikes.

 

[WolfMortum]

100% Legit​

​

 

[Preliat Mantis]

lol the last jedi still sucked even commies agree

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Darth Carnifex"]
He read it as much as the major news outlets which are now saying 'most' or 'all' of it is Russian trolls. Even if it was only 2% of the amount doesn't matter if there's a juicy story to tell.

 

[gdsryrox]

I'm guessing the Russians were also responsible for the box office drop and failing toy market?

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="gdsryrox"]
Reds under the bed!

 

[Marina DeVoe]

Duck and cover!

 

[Jor Kvall]

Sounds like the OP didn't read the original PDF file, or glossed over it and didn't really dive deep into the pertinent details.

Even if we take the paper at face value, and assume a) zero flaws in the methodology (100% accuracy), and b) all the so-called "bots" were Russian -- both generous assumptions -- that's only 27 out of 206 tweets, or 13% of all negative tweets @RianJohnson.

The paper then calls this "deliberate, organized political measures disguised as fan arguments" and frames it as a goal of the Russian government. Seems like Putin needs to step up his game, honestly.

But why don't you tell us what we're missing?

 

[Darth Carnifex]

Only 16 of the 33 trolls and/or sock puppet accounts had characteristics found in previously identified Russian bot accounts.

The paper only goes into detail about Russian involvement in regards to cognitive dissonance as a manipulation tactic.

Spoiler

These instances of cognitive dissonance further raise the likelihood of Russian influence operators being present. Several scholars (Rider and Peters, 2018; Fuchs, 2017; Howard et al., 2017; Kaminska et al., 2017) have shown how Russian influence operators exploit precisely this type of cognitive dissonance to persuade individual social media users that their values are under attack, cultivating and advancing polarization and disparity. This breakdown of American’s sense of community was and continues to be the purpose of the Russian social media influence campaign targeting the West (Giles, 2016; Nissen, 2015). Getting the media to pay attention to such conflicts only amplifies them, further advancing the Russian objective.

Cognitive dissonance also enables the spread of misinformation, which works to the advantage of the Russian actors, but is independent of such foreign influence campaigns. As shown by Doty (2013) and Kata (2012) in the case of the anti-vaccination debate, those participating in online debates, regardless of platform, will distort facts and spread them as misinformation to support their own argument. This often happens through the establishment of cognitive authority, such as citing first-hand knowledge, uncritically referencing dubious source material or assuming causality where none has been established (Doty, 2013). As mentioned in the introduction, Fantagonists have claimed that a majority of Star Wars fans dislike The Last Jedi. They base the claim on “evidence” such as The Last Jedi not performing as well as The Force Awakens at the box office and later on Blu-Ray/DVD, the user-generated score on the Rotten Tomatoes website and the fact that Solo: A Star Wars Story which opened about five months after The Last Jedi flopped at the box office, as this was supposedly because of a fan boycott. All of these claims have been easily and thoroughly debunked or shown as having no evidentiary basis (Mendelson, 2018a; Robles, 2018; The Numbers, 2018; Lovett, 2017). Yet, fantagonists still propagate this misinformation, which is then amplified by bots and sock puppet accounts for political purposes, just as it did during the Russian influence campaign during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.

Star Wars fandom is not the only cultural or pop culture sphere in which these influence operations are conducted. In February 2018, NBC News published a data set of more than 200,000 tweets collected from accounts that Twitter deleted after ascertaining that they were Russian troll accounts and part of the influence operation (Popken, 2018). The data set clearly shows that the Russian trolls were not just spreading messages of a political nature but were using engagements in pop culture and related fandoms as either an alibi to distract from their other trolling activities, or to insert themselves in online social groups that they may not reach through pure political messaging. By doing the latter, the trolls were able to advance their disinformation practices and create division within the fandoms they infiltrated. Examples from the NBC/Twitter data set includes a number of Russian trolls that played along with the then-popular Comedy Central tv show @Midnight’s ‘Hashtag Wars’, engaging with the online geek culture community @Blackgirlnerds, debating European soccer teams such as Manchester United and F.C. Barcelona and yes, also engaging with the Star Wars fan community, even then.

By parroting the misinformation about the study (that Russian trolls were solely to blame for the Last Jedi's backlash) then you are literally part of the misinformation problem.

 

[Alex StormWolf]

Russian trolls? We're seeing levels of desperation and stupidity on Disney's part that shouldn't even be possible.

 

[Jor Kvall]

By parroting the misinformation about the study (that Russian trolls were solely to blame for the Last Jedi's backlash)

I never said that.

You're doing nothing but attacking strawmen.