Russian Trolls and Fake News: Information or Identity Logics?

This article examines Russia's use of misinformation to influence the 2016 U.S. election by reviewing the content of one of the largest repositories of publicly available Twitter data from Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA). The article focuses on assessing whether Russia's communication strategy appealed to an informational logic of false information or to an identity logic. The evidence shows that Russia, through the IRA, was primarily invested in identity rather than informational claims particularly given that the bulk of Russia-linked communications sought to define then-candidate Donald Trump's identity and those of his opponents. The article concludes by identifying where future research is needed.