Title: The surprise Mueller indictment tells us how we've been wrong about Russian trolls - The Washington Post
Headings: The surprise Mueller indictment tells us how we've been wrong about Russian trolls
The surprise Mueller indictment tells us how we've been wrong about Russian trolls
Henry Farrell
Russian operations probably did not change voters’ minds
That does not mean Russian activities were not important
Russia has weaponized “flooding” against the U.S.
This has implications for what comes next

Content: It is easy to jump to the conclusion that this fake news gave Trump the majority he needed in a few swing states. AD
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The problem, as Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan discusses , is that this account does not really hold together. First, it is hard to be sure how many people (rather than bots) actually read these fake stories. Second, even if people did read them, they were buried among many, many other posts, some of them equally alarmist. Finally, there is a lot of political science research showing it is really hard to change people’s minds. Even massive TV advertising campaigns appear to have only tiny effects on people’s decisions over who to vote for. Social media posts, buried among a multitude of other such posts, are likely to have even less. That does not mean Russian activities were not important
To understand what Russia has been doing abroad, you need to understand what it has been doing at home. Political scientists such as Margaret Roberts and Josh Tucker of the Monkey Cage have documented how Chinese and Russian leaders discovered a new way of dealing with inconvenient voices in their own society. Rather than just trying to censor them, they have increasingly looked to drown them in a flood of other perspectives, arguments, claims, counterclaims and nonsense.