Engagement with partisan Russian troll tweets during the 2016 U.S. presidential election: a social identity perspective

Operatives working for the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) infiltrated social media with the goal of disrupting the 2016 U.S. presidential election. We investigate how these operatives or “trolls” leveraged partisan political identities in discussing presidential candidates and parties on Twitter. Adopting a social identity lens, we conceptualize retweeting troll content as a form of identity performance and examine the message properties that led troll tweets to resonate among Twitter users. The findings highlight the importance of partisan trolls’ persistence in tweeting about candidates and parties as well as their discussion of the political outgroup and incivility in the form of name-calling. The results collectively indicate that Twitter users were sensitive to messages generated by IRA trolls and responded in a manner consistent with identity performance.