In the fall of 2017, when Americans were debating if
athletes should kneel during the U.S. national anthem as a form of
protest, Russian trolls on Twitter tried to inject the controversy into
Canada.
“The Canadian Football League is Protesting THEIR OWN National Anthem!” tweeted the account @chirrismogui.
“Canadian NHL Player CONSIDERING ‘Taking a Knee’ During U.S. Anthem,” wrote another account, @brristasi.
These
tweets and accounts — along with millions of others — have since been
deleted after being outed as trolls with the Internet Research Agency, a
company in St. Petersburg with ties to Russian government intelligence.
They are part of a cache of some 3 million archived tweets
recently pulled together by two American researchers. And the newly
released data sheds further light on how the now-notorious troll farm
sought to sow discord not only among Americans, but Canadians as well.
According
to a CBC News analysis, out of those 3 million tweets, close to 8,000
mentioned Canadian issues, like asylum seekers, the Quebec City mosque
shooting and the Keystone XL pipeline.
Stressed, Depressed, and Story Obsessed 