Russia used mainstream media to manipulate American voters - The Washington Post

Also see Pro-Gun Russian Bots Flood Twitter After Parkland Shooting (Wired), which concludes "The goal, after all, isn't to help one side or the other of the gun control debate win. It's to amplify the loudest voices in that fight, deepening the divisions between us."

"The common goal, said Albright and other researchers, was to polarize debate, pushing politically active people away from the center. Toward that end, the Russian accounts found plenty of material from U.S.-based sources of news and opinion.

“These trolls didn’t need to retweet RT and Sputnik,” Albright said. “All they needed to do was pick out certain themes and push them.”"

Russia used mainstream media to manipulate American voters - The Washington Post