Researchers Determine Trump Undermined On Instagram

Researchers have identified what they are calling a coordinated campaign to undermine President Trump on Instagram, an effort that bears hallmarks of the disinformation campaigns that proliferated on the platform in 2016, according to The Hill.

A recently published study by Italian analytics firm Ghost Data identified a network of 350 anti-Trump accounts coordinating efforts to promote messages deriding the president, sometimes with graphic or violent language. The researchers found 19 suspicious Instagram accounts that took the lead in promoting anti-Trump content.

In total, the posts from the accounts generated have more than 35.2 million interactions, with 3.9 million of those interactions occurring in the last two months. The study concluded that the anti-Trump Instagram campaign has ramped up over the past several months, with the network's activities swelling "dramatically" since April.

"Most content shared by these users is identical, while other images are slightly altered in size, colors, filter, partial or missing text," the researchers wrote.

"Many identical or similar posts are published a few minutes apart from each other, while some are even weeks apart," they added, explaining how they decided the campaign is coordinated rather than the result of organic political discourse.

Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, said in a statement that it is "investigating the accounts in question and have already removed those that we've found to violate our policies."