2016 US presidential election was not heavily influenced by disinformation campaigns, research finds

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton during a  presidential debate at Washington University in 2016. Picture: AP

The voting behaviour of American citizens heading into the 2016 US presidential election was not influenced by foreign disinformation campaigns on Twitter, a new study involving researchers from Trinity College Dublin has claimed.

Such disinformation campaigns only reached a small subset of users, most of whom were already highly partisan Republicans, during the race between Donald Trump and his Democrat rival Hillary Clinton according to the study.

Investigations by authorities in the US have previously found that Russian interference in the 2016 election aimed at influencing the outcome in favour of Donald Trump.

Assistant Professor in Political Science at Trinity Tom Paskhalis said that the events of 2016 and subsequent commentary around that election continue to feed into political discourse in America.

“Debate about the 2016 US election continues to raise questions about the legitimacy of the Trump presidency and to engender mistrust in the electoral system, which in turn may be related to Americans’ willingness to accept claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election and future elections,” he said.

The study, which included researchers from Trinity, New York, Copenhagen and Munich, examined social media users’ behaviour and attitudes between April and October 2016.

It found that potential exposure to Russian-coordinated influence accounts was heavily concentrated. Only 1% of users in the study accounted for 70% of exposures to such discinformation.

“In addition, those who identified as 'Strong Republicans' were exposed to roughly nine times as many posts from Russian foreign influence accounts than were those who identified as Democrats or Independents,” the researchers said.