"Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States."
~Alexander Hamilton
Today, we know much more about Russia’s social media disinformation operations than we did in 2017 when we launched the Hamilton 68 dashboard. The dashboard’s summative outputs mirrored criminal complaints and indictments filed by the Special Counsel, the DNI report on Russian activities and intentions in recent elections, and recent reports released by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee (among others) that demonstrate how the Kremlin infiltrates foreign audiences to undermine Western democracies.
The goal of Hamilton 68 was to raise awareness and inform questions for the larger research community, and we feel that as 2018 closes that the dashboard served its purpose. Hamilton 68 represented just a sample of an influence network compiled over a several year period on a single platform. Since we launched the project in August, 2017, accounts have been shuttered and others have expired, meaning the insights offered by this one network will continue to decline. Meanwhile, Congressional and other investigations have compelled social media companies to release their own data on these operations.
READ THE HAMILTON 68 YEAR-IN-REVIEW REPORT
The dashboard was a first step towards countering the Kremlin’s playbook through raising awareness on a single aspect of social media manipulation, and was never meant to be a complete rendering of Russian disinformation. We believe 2019 is the time to update and expand our analysis and information sharing on Russian disinformation.
Friday, December 21 will be the final day for the Hamilton 68 Dashboard, Version 1.0. We’ve learned a good deal about the strengths and weaknesses of the first dashboard, and behind the scenes we’ve been connecting with a talented network of researchers and technologists who have ideas for increasing the effectiveness and outputs of an upcoming second version of the dashboard:
Hamilton 68 – 2.0!
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LEGO set database: 6886-1: Galactic Peace Keeper.