This study develops upon recent scholarship about the Russian government's digital influence campaign to cultivate Black Americans during the 2016 election by rooting their efforts within a century-long strategy to exploit racial inequality to discredit and damage American democracy. Guided by Shifman’s (2013) construct of memetics, we employed a novel methodology that combined journalistic fact-checking and critical, qualitative analysis to study 164 Facebook advertisements targeted at Black Americans. These advertisements closely resembled Soviet-era propaganda and new disinformation strategies facilitated by the affordances of Facebook. Our findings reveal the advertisements exploited Facebook's interactive design and used an insider's voice to share real news about racial inequality, celebrate Black culture, and coordinate civic action. This study's methodological approach provides a meaningful framework for understanding how actors hack and deploy cultural knowledge to spread disinformation through social media platforms.

本研究基于最近关于俄罗斯政府在 2016 年大选期间开展的旨在培养美国黑人的数字影响力运动的学术研究，该运动将他们的努力植根于长达一个世纪的利用种族不平等来抹黑和破坏美国民主的战略中。在 Shifman (2013) 的模因构造的指导下，我们采用了一种新颖的方法，将新闻事实核查和批判性定性分析相结合，研究了 164 个针对美国黑人的 Facebook 广告。这些广告非常类似于苏联时代的宣传和由 Facebook 提供的新的虚假信息策略。我们的调查结果显示，这些广告利用了 Facebook 的互动设计，并利用内部人士的声音分享有关种族不平等的真实新闻，庆祝黑人文化，并协调公民行动。本研究的方法论方法提供了一个有意义的框架，用于理解行为者如何破解和部署文化知识以通过社交媒体平台传播虚假信息。