The Welcome to Media Roots Radio.

This is your host for today, Roby Martin.

We've been hearing an awful lot about bots recently, mostly Russian bots.

Following the Robert Mueller indictment of the 13 quote-unquote Russian trolls working for

the internet research agency, has been an awful lot of talk about influence operations online.

But how big is the Russian problem?

How big of an influence are they actually having through these influence operations?

Using Twitter accounts, sock puppets, or bot networks.

There was an article that appeared on the Huffington Post on March 14th called

How a Twitter Fight Over Bernie Sanders revealed a network of fake accounts by Paul Blumenthal.

The article starts,

When Russians at the Internet Research Agency interfered in U.S. politics,

it created false online personas and fake political groups to amplify divisive messages

that already had a homegrown American audience.

It's not too far from what some U.S. political consultants are doing themselves.

Take Sali Albright, a Democratic Party communications consultant who backed presidential candidate

Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Unsurprisingly, Albright is vocally opposed to President Donald Trump and a big supporter

of the resistance to his administration.

She is also one of the loudest, most divisive voices attacking Senator Bernie Sanders,

Clinton's one-time Democratic primary opponent and his left-wing supporters.

Well after the primary, Albright continues to claim that Sanders is a fraud, a liar, racist, and corrupt, among many other things.

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