Regardless of personal opinions on
Star Wars: The Last Jedi, it appears that Russian trolls used latent fan disagreements around the film to propagate and weaponize a “narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society,” at least according to a recent study.
Via
Mashable, the
study in question was done by Morten Bay, a research fellow at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. It compares the social media reaction that happened in the 2016 US Presidential Election to the social media climate that existed (and still exists) around The Last Jedi.
Ultimately, the study found "evidence of deliberate, organized political influence measures disguised as fan arguments” by examining various tweets directed at Rian Johnson, the writer and director of the film.
The results of the study conclude that of those who directly addressed Johnson on Twitter to express negative viewpoints, "more than half are bots, trolls/sock puppets or political activists using the debate to propagate political messages supporting extreme right-wing causes and the discrimination of gender, race or sexuality. A number of these users appear to be Russian trolls.” The paper concludes that these are organized attempts at politicizing the pop culture discourse on social media for strategic purposes.
The article stressed that there are naturally a "substantial number of fans who simply think The Last Jedi is a bad film and who use social media to express their disappointment.” However, regardless of motive or bot/troll status, the vast majority of negative fans expressed the belief that they were in the majority, and that most Star Wars fans disliked The Last Jedi.
