This project utilizes rpy2, an interface which allows you to run R code imbedded in a Python process (Jupyter Notebook). All data manipulation was done in Python using the pandas library then the data was passed into R using rpy2. Visualizations were created using the R ggplot2 library.
In 2018, The United States House-Intelligence Committee (USHIC) published a report confirming Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election. Though most Americans accept this fact, the specifics of how the Russian actors meddled in the election is unclear to many. As part of the USHIC report, a set of targeted social media ads created between 2015 and 2017 by a Russian ‘troll farm’, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), was released to the public. Using this data and visualizations we found evidence of the following:
- The IRA’s ad content targeted both conservative and progressive interest groups.
- A three-fold increase in social media ad activity in the timeframe leading up to both primary and general election dates.
- The average ad sentiment before the general election was more negative than following the election.