Russia is no stranger to meddling in the elections of other nations. One aim of Russian government-funded media is to change the political discourse around the globe. These actions can be seen by Russian advertising on U.S. social media during the 2016 election.
Recently, a group of Russians posing as a marketing group have been using Twitter bots to disrupt the 2017 German election. BuzzFeed News investigated this group of 30 members whose use of Twitter bots help to promote hashtags supporting the Alternative for Germany party (AfD). Headed by Frauke Petry, the AfD is a far-right political party that supports nationalism, populism and is heavily anti-immigration.
This groups use of bots draws up many questions about their ties to the Russian government and the AfD. It's not clear whether the group is actually a marketing or political group. Alexander, who answered to BuzzFeed reporter Jenny, denied any ties to a political party. On the popular Russian social networking site, VK, Alexander told Jenny how his team uses Twitter bots to boost AfD related tweets in exchange for money. For pro-AfD posts, Alexander charges 15,000 euros and 2,000 euros for retweets. Below is a retweet of an official AfD post the day of the election by one of Alexander's bots.
When these pro-AfD posts and retweets generated by Twitter bots get a lot of attention, these posts trend and in turn spark political conversation on Twitter. Another source that discovered the use of Russian Twitter bots to interfere with the German election is The Digital Forensics Research Lab. This organization found that these bots were spreading "false claims about election fraud in the final hours of the (German) campaign." This organization monitors bot activity and is located in Washington, D.C.
Germans are becoming more aware of Russian attempts to disrupt both German politics and media. Handelsblatt Global, an “English-language edition of Germany's leading business and financial daily,” mentions in an article about the relationship between Russians and Germans, “Following a high-profile but failed attempt by Russian propaganda to spread fake news in Germany last year and suspicions that Russia interfered in the recent American and French elections, Germans appear to be growing more vigilant about Russian disinformation." Russian involvement in the political discourse of other countries aiming to change the political landscape of Europe is becoming more apparent to European citizens.
Russian government seeks to improve the image of Russia amongst the German population, which has a low opinion of Russian culture. German organization Körber also revealed in a survey that “60 percent of Russians see similarities between Russian and German values, only 11 percent of Germans do.” This recent Russian involvement in the affairs of other countries can add to new tensions between the Russian and German people.