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Maps |
Here are some maps! Some of the ads in this collection feature spatial information.
Reading these maps requires some additional knowledge of how Facebook targets ads--something that the site has come under criticism for. Facebook has faced criticism for allowing users to target advertisements to "Jew-haters," and for allowing housing advertisers to exclude Black and Asian users from target audiences.
Facebook continues to allow advertisers to curate their audiences. The ads collected in this dataset target Facebook users who have liked certain pages, who Facebook thinks have certain interests, and who live in or visit certain places. Below are a few maps I created. They show the places the Internet Research Agency targeted during this time period. I hope you'll pay attention to the differences between "location" and "residence."
"Location" and "residence" mean specific things. "Location" refers to the place you currently are, as seen by Facebook using [technology]. "Residence," on the other hand, means the place you call home, also according to Facebook. If you have a Facebook account and have indicated where you currently live, that's it. As an example, my Facebook profile says I live in Los Angeles, California, but I am currently typing this text from a hotel in Portland, Oregon. LA is my residence, while Portland is my location.
<iframe seamless frameborder="0" src="https://public.tableau.com/views/Locationofads/Sheet1?:embed=y&:display_count=yes&publish=yes&:showVizHome=no" width="800" height="600"></iframe>This map shows the amount of ads purchased in each location. The largest areas include St. Louis, Missouri; Atlanta, Georgia; and Baltimore, Maryland. These are all large cities with relatively large populations of Black Americans and immigrants. St. Louis has the largest population of Bosnian immigrants in the United States.
Of particular note is that the St. Louis metro area contains the most ads out of the entire county, with 143 ads between St. Louis and Ferguson. The inclusion of Ferguson, a relatively small city, indicates that the Internet Research Agency knew that the city was the site of heavily publicized protests against police violence and racism. The IRA targeted many of its ads to Black users of Facebook, and many, many ads were focused on race and racism.
<iframe seamless frameborder="0" src="https://public.tableau.com/views/Locationofads/Sheet1?:embed=y&:display_count=yes&publish=yes&:showVizHome=no" width="800" height="600"></iframe>This map is different from the first. It shows ads targeted based on user residence. The largest city is New York, New York, with 52 records. After New York, the three most-targeted cities are Charlotte, North Carolina; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Cleveland, Ohio. In the 2016 presidential election, North Carolina, Ohio, and Minnesota were considered "tossup" states.
This shows that the IRA also understood the general electoral politics of the country during the 2016 presidential election, and that it sought to manipulate tensions in these regions. More specifically, in the case of residence, this means that the IRA pushed ads promoting Donald Trump in swing states.
Texas also represents a significant share of the ads, but the ads in Texas are targeted towards particular cities, including Abeline, Corpus Christi, San Antonio, Tyler, Waco, Brownwood, Austin, Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, and more.