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“Senator, We Sell Ads”: Analysis of the 2016 Russian Facebook Ads Campaign

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Advances in Data Science (ICIIT 2018)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 941))

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Abstract

One of the key aspects of the United States democracy is free and fair elections that allow for a peaceful transfer of power from one President to the next. The 2016 US presidential election stands out due to suspected foreign influence before, during, and after the election. A significant portion of that suspected influence was carried out via social media. In this paper, we look specifically at 3,500 Facebook ads allegedly purchased by the Russian government. These ads were released on May 10, 2018 by the US Congress House Intelligence Committee. We analyzed the ads using natural language processing techniques to determine textual and semantic features associated with the most effective ones. We clustered the ads over time into the various campaigns and the labeled parties associated with them. We also studied the effectiveness of Ads on an individual, campaign and party basis. The most effective ads tend to have less positive sentiment, focus on past events and are more specific and personalized in nature. The more effective campaigns also show such similar characteristics. The campaigns’ duration and promotion of the Ads suggest a desire to sow division rather than sway the election.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/facebook-social-media-privacy-and-the-use-and-abuse-of-data.

  2. 2.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/russian-facebook-ads-2016-election-trump-clinton-bernie-2017-11.

  3. 3.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/17/facebooks-vp-of-ads-says-russian-meddling-aimed-to-divide-us.html.

  4. 4.

    https://data.world/scottcame/us-house-psci-social-media-ads.

  5. 5.

    https://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_2003/ling001/penn_treebank_pos.html.

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Acknowledgement

EF is grateful to AFOSR (#FA9550-17-1-0327) for supporting this work. RD carried out this work at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering as part of the INDO - U.S. Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, 721302, India

    Ritam Dutt

  2. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA

    Ashok Deb & Emilio Ferrara

Authors
  1. Ritam Dutt
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  2. Ashok Deb
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  3. Emilio Ferrara
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ashok Deb .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Leman Akoglu

  2. University of Southern California, Marina Del Rey, CA, USA

    Emilio Ferrara

  3. CEG, Anna University, Chennai, India

    Mallayya Deivamani

  4. Northeastern University at Silicon Valley, San Jose, CA, USA

    Ricardo Baeza-Yates

  5. Anna University, Chennai, India

    Palanisamy Yogesh

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Dutt, R., Deb, A., Ferrara, E. (2019). “Senator, We Sell Ads”: Analysis of the 2016 Russian Facebook Ads Campaign. In: Akoglu, L., Ferrara, E., Deivamani, M., Baeza-Yates, R., Yogesh, P. (eds) Advances in Data Science. ICIIT 2018. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 941. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3582-2_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3582-2_12

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  • Print ISBN: 978-981-13-3581-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-3582-2

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