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Analysing the Impact of Russian Tweets on the 2016 US Presidential Elections
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In 2017 and 2018, the social media giants Twitter, Facebook, and also Google were heavily criticized for allowing international agents, especially Russia to spread false or misleading content meant to influence public opinion in the US leading up the the 2016 elections. This public scrutiny ultimately led to the publication of two major data bundles: one of Russian tweets and another of Iranian tweets. These tweets — according to Twitter, Congress, and various media reports — alledgely were used to manipulate the US voter into voting for Donald Trump.

In this exercise we shall analyse the Russian troll tweets dataset and conclude whether there was any grounds to point fingers at the Russians. We will try to find out how tweeting actitivities might have corresponded to certain events leading up to the elections, during and after the elections.

This dataset is a subset of the nearly 3 million tweets sent from Twitter handles connected to the Internet Research Agency, a Russian "troll factory" and a defendant in an indictment that was filed by the Justice Department in February 2018, as part of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.

DISCLAIMER¶
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This analysis is simply an academic exercise. It is not part of or related in anyway to any investigations. This exercise does not have any opinion as to whether these tweets had any impact on the elections or not or whether they influenced the voters in any way. This analysis should therefore not be used in any legal setting as a supporting evidence.