> So, how is this different compared to a slap by one famous person that got reposted thousand times?
Intent and strategy:
> By constructing a timeline of the IRA messages, they found left-leaning IRA trolls posted large volumes of entertainment content in their artificial liberal community and shifted away from political content late in the campaign. Simultaneously, conservative trolls were targeting their community with increases in political content. The effort would have encouraged the right to vote and the left to ignore politics.
I understand it as analysis going other way. They dont try to trace everyone who tweets about the music guessing their motivations. Instead, they look at known Russia troll accounts and look at what they tweet. Then they look at differences between accounts targeted at left and those on the right.
So, your question is orthogonal - it is impossible to answer.
I think one man publicly assaulting another at an incredibly high-profile event in front of a live global audience was bound to be insanely popular regardless of whether or not a Russian bot army signal boosted it.
While true, it is important to know that they DID signal boost it, and that at least for those couple days, news about Ukraine was more buried than it otherwise would have been.
Don't think in binary terms. Russian influence campaigns excel by exaggerating valid newsworthy events.
> The question was: why is this any different from what happened at the Oscars?
Honestly, the problem with that question is that it's asking about the wrong object.
It's like asking what's the difference between shooting a person and shooting a target, when the bullets are identical. A bullet can be used to perform a lot of different goals, just like a piece of attention-grabbing content can. The thing to pay attention to isn't the content itself, but how it was aimed and who did the aiming.
To give a similar example: The text of the First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...," yet slander and libel are still illegal. No amount of banging on that pithy text will change that actual situation.
> Honestly, the problem with that question is that it's asking about the wrong object.
If you want to rephrase the question so it is asking about the right object then be my guest - I see you added an answer too though.
I think we've just answered the question two different ways that ultimately boil down to the same thing. One event happened organically, the other was a deliberate action (with an intent, if you will) even if they both had a similar effect. In fact I suspect The Slap was bigger, but Ukraine wasn't pushed out of the headlines before, during or since the Oscars.
It is internet, so there's plenty of actors, some of them paid, some of them foreign.
I quite remember how the USA openly declared that they are going to influence the whole world via the internet domination, and took responsibility for things such as Arab Spring.
The fit that the USA tries to throw at the face of some music spam-posted by "paid foreign" bots is amusing in that context. And the whole world understands that context. Very. Clearly.
On top of it, the US military and law enforcement agencies use sockpuppet accounts.
Don't get me wrong, I don't agree with any state actors manipulating public perception out of their own interests. Just agreeing that yeah the US pulls quite some bs too
Intent and strategy:
> By constructing a timeline of the IRA messages, they found left-leaning IRA trolls posted large volumes of entertainment content in their artificial liberal community and shifted away from political content late in the campaign. Simultaneously, conservative trolls were targeting their community with increases in political content. The effort would have encouraged the right to vote and the left to ignore politics.