What your hot take on pineapple pizza has to do with Russia's effort to influence U.S. elections.
Soon it was a meme. Senator Ron Wyden tweeted that"my opinion on pineapple pizza is Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump need to stop obstructing election security legislation."
In an analysis of Russia’s interference tactics during the 2016 presidential campaign, officials found that trolls went after wedge issues like race, gender, and sexuality. But they weren’t out to persuade and win arguments, Krebs said. Academics who study disinformation say that the pineapple debate is instructive because it’s a passionate topic that's disconnected from political opinions."The rest of our identities are becoming increasingly aligned with our political identities," said Kevin Munger, assistant professor of political science and social data analytics at Penn State University."So if you say you go to church, you’re more likely to also hold a certain political position on many issues.
Issues like race, or gender, or sexual orientation may, like pineapple pizza, make the United States uniquely vulnerable to these attacks."Russian ads were not some uniquely creative attempt to persuade Americans on issues that hadn’t occurred to American political consultants," said Nate Persily, director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, which studies the Internet’s effects on democracy."They were just echoing what was already going on domestically.
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