[mike_hearn]

The logic makes no sense because it specifically fingers Russia, yet any adversary of the United States could conceivably benefit from "sowing division". Once you've left behind the specific support for Trump the underlying logic linking it to Russia collapses but the conclusion has been kept, which indicates motivated reasoning.

There's a deeper issue here too. It paints the posting of political talking points from both sides of a US election as generic "sowing division". That is a world view that is quite totalitarian. I could describe it equally as "invigorating the democratic process by increasing interest in the election" and be no less accurate.

a large part of his support was due to the fear created by the appearance of growing civil unrest

You haven't shown that, you haven't even laid the groundwork for that. It's actually the first time I've ever seen such a claim. Most analyses of why he won point to the weakness of Clinton, his policies in immigration and trade deals, his opposition to political correctness and so on. Not "the appearance of growing civil unrest".

[hackinthebochs]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/charlottesville-and-the...

This link goes into detail about the perspectives of some whites on the BLM movement and how Trump played on those fears and represented a solution to growing minority influence (presumably at the expense of whites) in the wider culture. This also needs to be understood in the context of disruptive BLM protests as well as the white nationalist protests in Charolettesville.

>yet any adversary of the United States could conceivably benefit from "sowing division"

This is just so obtuse on so many levels.

[emodendroket]

I'm not sure what's obtuse about the second bit. If the goal is just weakening the US Russia is not the only actor with the motive.

[hackinthebochs]

The point is only reasonable when divorced from all context of Trump's Russian contacts, Russia's interest in getting sanctions overturned, Russia's known past disinformation campaigns, DNC hacking, wikileaks, etc. Within the proper context it is entirely unreasonable to even posit some other actor working to influence the election.

[mike_hearn]

But the claims are no longer that Russia manipulated social media to get votes for Trump specifically. Therefore any Trump/Russia link is irrelevant to the current narrative, which is that "someone" is using "bots" to generically "sow division".

None of these claims have any actual evidence backing them, and when claims can be sourced the sources collapse under examination; see my article above.

But we shouldn't need to deeply analyse academic papers to see that this narrative is nonsense. It is just not internally consistent. Putin had clear reasons to want Trump to win, that I accept. So why would his staff post things supporting Clinton? There is no logic to this idea whatsoever, and it's not where the narrative started.

[emodendroket]

The DNC/WikiLeaks stuff is thinly sourced and the rest of it not that compelling.

[emodendroket]

I mostly agree with your perspective, but Trump repeated "law and order" like a kind of mantra at the debates and I think a fear of lawlessness is a real motivator for his base.