Throughout 2017, as social-media-addled minds chased one shiny news object after another, one story was constant and inescapable: “Russia.”
But what “Russia” meant, exactly, depended a lot on where you got your news. The “Russia story” that developed throughout the year was likely very different from the “Russia story” as it was understood by your friends, relatives, or co-workers, not just because your politics might be different than theirs but because you might have been encountering different news entirely. To some Democrats, the “Russia Story” was that Donald Trump was a wholesale asset of the Russian government. To others, the “Russia Story” was the F.B.I.’s methodical investigation. And to many Republicans, the “Russia story” was actually a story about the Democrats’ collusion with Russia, not the Trump campaign’s.
We wanted to see how those competing narratives were shaped, week by week, story by story, through 2017 — examining not just broad “liberal” and “conservative” bubbles, but also the different ways highly partisan readers and their less-partisan neighbors might have encountered the story. Would outlets directed toward zealously partisan Democrats frame the story differently than those with readers more evenly distributed along the political spectrum? What about on the other side of the fence?
To re-create approximate social-media “bubbles,” we used “partisanship scores,” developed by Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center. Rather than attempt to arbitrarily measure the slant of a given publication’s editorial line, these scores gauge the partisanship of its audience, by measuring how frequently its stories were shared by Clinton or Trump supporters during the 2016 election. For our purposes, outlets shared vastly more often by Clinton supporters than Trump supporters are categorized as “Highly Democratic”; outlets where the ratio was closer but still weighted toward Clinton were labeled “Mostly Democratic”; and so on. These reconstructed bubbles aren’t a perfect representation of how people encountered their news, but the partisanship scores allow us to focus on publications’ actual audience — the real citizens of the bubble — rather than our perceptions of their politics.
It’s not as simple as the “liberal” story and the “conservative” story, either: Across social media, multiple competing narratives emerged, even within broad political coalitions. The people obsessively following Louise Mensch would have a different story from those following the New York Times, or, for that matter, Glenn Greenwald — even if all three of those groups voted for Hillary Clinton last year.
Highly Democratic Audience
These are publications that were shared almost exclusively by Clinton supporters during last year’s election. Includes:
Occupy Democrats
The Palmer Report
Addicting Info
MOSTLY Democratic Audience
These are publications that were shared mostly by Clinton supporters, but sometimes also by Trump supporters, during last year’s election. Includes:
New York Times
Washington Post
CNN
Mostly Republican Audience
These are publications that were shared mostly by Trump supporters, but sometimes also by Clinton supporters, during last year’s election. Includes:
The Hill
Wall Street Journal
MarketWatch
Highly Republican Audience
These are publications that were shared almost exclusively by Trump supporters during last year’s election. Includes:
Breitbart
The Federalist
LyingCrookedHillary.com
Having constructed our bubbles, we selected some of the biggest Russia stories of the year — based on the total volume written — and pulled the most-shared Facebook posts and most-shared articles across social media for the weeks those stories broke.
When you look through the year story by story, filtered by audience partisanship, narratives and strategies begin to come into focus. Most obvious is the difference between the highly Republican bubble and the others: Week after week, the most-shared and read stories weren’t about Donald Trump, but about Democrats, and their relationships to Russia. In fact, it was hard to find a positive defense of the Trump campaign’s actions even among the president’s most fervently loyal outlets; the narrative that developed through the year was not one of an innocent Trump but of guilty — and hypocritical — Democrats, many of whom had, like Trump or his aides, met with the Russian ambassador or been invested in Russian businesses.
On the Democratic side of the partisanship spectrum, other patterns emerged. Highly Democratic audiences preferred dramatic packaging and stirring appeals to the more cautious, news-focused stories that dominated the “Mostly Democratic” bubble. A reader of heavily partisan sites like Occupy Democrats or the Palmer Report lived through a year of near weekly crisis, in which a new development was always going to crack the case wide open, or the president was always on the precipice of impeachment. A reader that tended toward publications with more bipartisan audiences didn’t have, exactly, a relaxed year — but it was certainly less sensational.
And what about the “Mostly Republican” audiences? As the Berkman Klein study that first used these partisanship scores puts it, the center-right is “the least populated and least influential portion of the media spectrum”; very few outlets — and even fewer popular ones — can be categorized as even moderately center-right. Of the publications that can be counted as having “Slightly Republican” audiences, only the Hill drew enough shares to crack the top stories every week, and it was hard to identify a consistent narrative at all.
Below, for each big Russia-related story of the year — from Buzzfeed publishing the “Steele dossier” to the news that Michael Flynn had pled guilty — we’re showing a top Facebook post and providing a list of widely shared stories, as well as our summary of what each bubble was talking about — and what someone stuck inside that bubble might take away from that coverage.
The Biggest Moments in the Russia Story This Year
What developments in the ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign's relationship the Russian government earned the most media coverage this year? The chart below shows, week by week, the number of sentences in stories across approximately 1,500 media sources that include the search terms "Russia" and "Flynn" / "Trump" / "Manafort" / "Mueller" / "Comey" / "Clinton" / "Kushner".
Jan. 10
BuzzFeed publishes the Steele dossier (100,832 sentences written)
Feb. 14
Michael Flynn resigns (132,575 sentences written)
May 9
Trump fires James Comey (136,624 sentences written)
May 17
Robert Mueller is named special prosecutor (153,023 sentences written)
Jun. 8
Comey and Jeff Sessions testify to Congress (108,235 sentences written)
Jul. 9
Donald Trump Jr.: "I love it." (121,811 sentences written)
Oct. 30
Paul Manafort is indicted (78,136 sentences written)
Dec. 1
Flynn pleads guilty to lying to F.B.I. (39,949 sentences written)
Jan.
Feb.
Mar.
Apr.
May
Jun.
Jul.
Aug.
Sept.
Oct.
Nov.
Dec.
Source: MediaCloud (Dec. 19, 2017)
NEW YORK MAGAZINE
The Biggest Moments in the Russia Story This Year
What developments in the ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign’s relationship the Russian government earned the most media coverage this year? The chart below shows, week by week, the number of sentences in stories across approximately 1,500 media sources that include the search terms "Russia" and "Flynn" / "Trump" / "Manafort" / "Mueller" / "Comey" / "Clinton" / "Kushner".
Jan. 10
BuzzFeed publishes the Steele dossier (100,832 sentences written)
Feb. 14
Michael Flynn resigns (132,575 sentences written)
May 9
Trump fires James Comey (136,624 sentences written)
May 17
Robert Mueller is named special prosecutor (153,023 sentences written)
Jun. 8
Comey and Jeff Sessions testify to Congress (108,235 sentences written)
Jul. 9
Donald Trump Jr.: "I love it." (121,811 sentences written)
Oct. 30
Paul Manafort is indicted (78,136 sentences written)
Dec. 1
Flynn pleads guilty to lying to F.B.I. (39,949 sentences written)
Jan.
Feb.
Mar.
Apr.
May
Jun.
Jul.
Aug.
Sept.
Oct.
Nov.
Dec.
Source: MediaCloud (Dec. 19, 2017)
NEW YORK MAGAZINE
The Biggest Moments in the Russia Story This Year
What developments in the ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign’s relationship the Russian government earned the most media coverage this year? The chart below shows, week by week, the number of sentences in stories across approximately 1,500 media sources that include the search terms "Russia" and "Flynn" / "Trump" / "Manafort" / "Mueller" / "Comey" / "Clinton" / "Kushner".
Jan. 10
BuzzFeed publishes the Steele dossier (100,832 sentences written)
Feb. 14
Michael Flynn resigns (132,575 sentences written)
May 9
Trump fires James Comey (136,624 sentences written)
May 17
Robert Mueller is named special prosecutor (153,023 sentences written)
Jun. 8
Comey and Jeff Sessions testify to Congress (108,235 sentences written)
Jul. 9
Donald Trump Jr.: "I love it." (121,811 sentences written)
Oct. 30
Paul Manafort is indicted (78,136 sentences written)
Dec. 1
Flynn pleads guilty to lying to F.B.I. (39,949 sentences written)
Jan.
Feb.
Mar.
Apr.
May
Jun.
Jul.
Aug.
Sept.
Oct.
Nov.
Dec.
Source: MediaCloud (Dec. 19, 2017)
NEW YORK MAGAZINE
The Biggest Moments in the Russia Story This Year
What developments in the ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign’s relationship the Russian government earned the most media coverage this year? The chart below shows, week by week, the number of sentences in stories across approximately 1,500 media sources that include the search terms "Russia" and "Flynn" / "Trump" / "Manafort" / "Mueller" / "Comey" / "Clinton" / "Kushner".
Jan. 10
BuzzFeed publishes the Steele dossier (100,832 sentences written)
Feb. 14
Flynn resigns (132,575 sentences written)
May 9
Trump fires Comey (136,624 sentences written)
May 17
Mueller named special prosecutor (153,023 sentences written)
Jul. 9
Trump Jr.: "I love it." (121,811 sentences written)
Oct. 30
Manafort indicted (78,136 sentences written)
Dec. 1
Flynn pleads guilty to lying to F.B.I. (39,949 sentences written)
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Source: MediaCloud (Dec. 19, 2017)
NEW YORK MAGAZINE
January 10
BuzzFeed Publishes the Steele Dossier
On January 10, BuzzFeed published “the Steele Dossier,” an independently commissioned intelligence report on President Trump’s past relationship with Russia. Among the allegations: that Russian intelligence had a video of the president enticing sex workers to pee on a hotel bed.
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HIGHLY DEMOCRATIC AUDIENCE
If you only got your news from this bubble: You’d think the Steele dossier was true. While the BuzzFeed article itself was cautious, this bubble was insisting that Trump “resign or be impeached” over “the Russian sex tape” (not to get excessively technical, but the alleged tape is not, properly speaking, a “sex tape”); another post claimed that “U.S. intelligence” had “confirmed Trump is being actively blackmailed by Russia.”
If you only got your news from this bubble: You’d be highly conscious of a spat between CNN and the Trump administration. The actual, shocking contents of the Steele dossier barely appeared at all in this more-staid Democratic bubble. Instead, CNN and New York Times reports about the fact that Trump had been briefed on the Steele dossier dominated, as did a lengthy video of Anderson Cooper and Kellyanne Conway arguing about CNN’s article on-air.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You weren’t much stressed about the Steele dossier in particular. The dossier as a subject only cracked the most-shared articles from these publications in the context of a Wall Street Journal report on the identity of its author. Otherwise, Russia appeared in slightly more prosaic contexts — “Was Trump behind GOP policy changes on Ukraine?” at Business Insider, and “Trump to meet Putin in first foreign trip as president: report” at The Hill.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You’d think the true enemies of this entire affair were John McCain — who gave the dossier to the FBI — and John Lewis — who announced he’d skip Trump’s inauguration over the Russia connection. This bubble only covered the Steele dossier in the context of furious posts about McCain and Lewis, though one major Facebook page did acknowledge it directly: President Trump’s. “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me,” he wrote. “I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA — NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!”
Other widely shared articles:
New York Post: “John McCain: I gave Russia blackmail dossier on Trump to FBI” (72.1k shares)
Reporters Reveal FBI Investigating Trump Campaign — But Cleared Michael Flynn
In successive reports, McClatchy and the New York Times report that a multiagency working group has been investigating links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, focusing on intercepted communication between Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Roger Stone, and Russian operatives. A few days later, the Washington Post reported that the FBI had examined Michael Flynn’s calls with the Russian ambassador and found no evidence of wrongdoing.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were well-informed about the ongoing investigation into Trump-campaign operatives. Publications shared among this audience focused on news of the investigation, including both the more-damning stories about the investigation itself and the somewhat exonerating fact that Flynn had been cleared by the FBI — though, notably, stories about the former were consistently more widely shared than stories from the same publications about the latter.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You got the sense that the investigation was widespread, serious, and could possibly reveal that Russian involvement affected the election. McClatchy reported that six law-enforcement and intelligence agencies had been conducting an investigation into the Trump team’s ties with Russia for months, including the possibility that Kremlin-funded hackers actually benefited Trump’s campaign.
If you only got your news from this bubble: Your main takeaway was that Flynn didn’t do anything wrong. A few days after The Wall Street Journal reported that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was a particular person of interest in the investigation, the Washington Post reported that the FBI had actually reviewed Flynn’s communications with the Russian ambassador and found no evidence of wrongdoing. Right-leaning publications used this to undermine the credibility of previous reporting and the seriousness of the investigation.
A day after the Washington Post reports that Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser, had lied to Vice-President Pence about discussions with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Flynn resigns. That same day — unbeknownst to most of us — Trump calls FBI Director James Comey into the Oval Office and suggests “letting this thing go” because Flynn is a “good guy.”
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HIGHLY DEMOCRATIC AUDIENCE
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were mostly celebrating what felt like an early victory against Trump. On Facebook, this bubble was flooded with memes about Flynn’s regular campaign chant “lock her up,” and the most shared post was a cathartic rant from Shep Smith about Trump’s treatment of the media. The good feeling also meant pushing for more: An NBC story reporting that Pence had been informed of Flynn’s lying on February 9 was aggressively repackaged by (who else?) Occupy Democrats as evidence that Pence was “implicated” — not in a crime, as the headline might suggest, just in showing that Pence is “just as much of a hypocrite as the rest of the false patriots in the Republican Party.”
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were closely following the saga of Flynn’s resignation, and hoping that it marked the beginning of congressional investigations into the Trump campaign. Publications in this bubble were by far the most shared across media this week, thanks to close coverage of Flynn’s resignation from the Times, the Post, and CNN — but also thanks to forceful editorials from Thomas Friedman (“What Trump Is Doing Is Not O.K.”) and the Times editorial board (“Time for Congress to Investigate Mr. Trump’s Ties to Russia”).
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were split between hoping for a bipartisan investigation and being frustrated that Democratic lobbyists’ ties to Russia were going ignored. Forbes, whose articles rarely go viral, had a huge hit with a post attempting to connect Democratic lobbying groups to Russian interests, but this bubble’s other publications were more interested in Republicans like Roy Blunt calling for a bipartisan investigation into the president.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You’d know that the real story is, of course, Hillary Clinton’s ties to Russia. Flynn barely appeared in stories seen by highly Republican sharers this week: The focus was, instead, on the real Russia story, which is, of course, that Hillary Clinton allowed a Canadian mining company to be sold to a Russian energy company, handing over uranium stores to Russia and, the story goes, personally enriching the secretary and her husband. Not to be outdone, the Gateway Pundit reached even further back for the real real Russia story, which is that in 1984, Ted Kennedy “asked Russia to intervene” to “beat Reagan.” “Mainstream Media Definitely will NOT show this,” the Gateway Pundit wrote, and, well, factually, it was correct.
The Washington Post reports that the Attorney General met with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, twice during the campaign — despite the fact that he’d told senators during his confirmation hearing that he “did not have communications with the Russians.”
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HIGHLY DEMOCRATIC AUDIENCE
If you only got your news from this bubble: You weren’t necessarily aware of the Sessions-Kislyak meeting. Publications in this bubble were, interestingly enough, more focused on broad looks at Russia-Trump connections — and forward momentum on investigations — than they were in the specific story of the Kislyak meetings, and the biggest story from this group was a conspiratorial HuffPost piece that vaguely connected the Keystone Pipeline to Trump to Putin.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were well aware of Session’s lack of disclosure about his meeting with Kislyak, which was covered in depth in two Post stories, as well as meetings between Jared Kushner, Michael Flynn, and Kislyak, thanks to a Times piece. But you also knew that Nancy Pelosi had misstated in saying she hadn’t met Kislyak — a major right-wing meme-story — since the top story in this bubble was a Politico piece proving it.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You weren’t happy with Jeff Sessions. Not much broke through among publications with a mostly Republican audience this week, but the stories that did — a Journal scoop about Sessions using political campaign funds to fly to his meeting with Kislyak, and a Hill post quoting Democrat Elijah Cummings demanding Sessions’s resignation — were critical of Sessions, and didn’t at all touch on the hyperconservative meme that Nancy Pelosi had also met with Kislyak.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You’d know that the Russian ambassador had met with President Obama and several Democratic senators. In some ways, the heavily conservative publications of this bubble got more play off of the Kislyak story than publications with more liberal audiences — no story is better to the highly Republican quadrant of publishers than one about Democrats acting (imagine serious scare quotes) hypocritical, or even better, actively misspeaking, as Nancy Pelosi did when she said she’d never met Kislyak.
In a series of early Saturday-morning tweets, Trump accuses Obama of wiretapping his phone just before the election and calls him a “bad (or sick) guy.” James Comey then asks the Justice Department to publicly refute Trump’s claim, setting the stage for their impending battle. On Sunday, Trump follows up with another tweet demanding Congress to investigate his claims.
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If you only got your news from this bubble: You thought the whole thing was proof of Trump’s idiocy, and therefore really funny or possibly even good news. Funny or Die stitched together second-long clips from Obama’s speeches into an “admission” of guilt, while Andy Borowitz just mocked Trump’s intelligence. There was also a hopeful strain of lefty news that saw Trump’s tweet as proof that he was under surveillance as part of an investigation into his dealings with Russia.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You knew that there was no evidence for Trump’s claim, but you also got more context about the brewing tensions between Trump and the FBI. On Sunday, the New York Times reported that Comey had been pressuring the Justice Department to deny Trump’s claim, but declined to issue his own statement.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You wondered what this breach of conduct could mean for Trump’s presidency. As in the more liberal bubbles, stories making fun of Trump and emphasizing the outlandishness of his claim were heavily shared. But the biggest story in this bubble suggested that Trump’s claim, if false, could constitute a major scandal and pave the way to his impeachment.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You thought Trump was probably the victim of a conspiracy. Publications in this bubble looked for ways to bolster Trump’s claim, and some picked up WikiLeaks’s tweet about Obama wiretapping his enemies through PRISM, suggesting that he was capable of doing the same to Donald Trump. Other stories, including one from the Gateway Pundit, tried to rope in former Attorney General and longtime Republican bête noire Loretta Lynch, who would have signed off on a FISA warrant if one existed.
James Comey Testifies to Congress. Sally Yates Does Not.
On March 20, James Comey — still the director of the FBI — testifies to Congress about his agency’s investigation into Russian interference into the 2016 election. A few days later, Trump asks the director of National Intelligence and the head of the NSA to deny evidence that his campaign colluded with Russia; both men decline and later testify about the request. Representative Devin Nunes, who has been making a fool of himself all week, cancels testimony from former acting Attorney General Sally Yates.
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HIGHLY DEMOCRATIC AUDIENCE
If you only got your news from this bubble: You’d think the evidence against Trump was mounting. Much of this bubble focused on a short statement California representative Adam Schiff gave before Comey’s congressional testimony, summarizing the circumstantial evidence of ties between Russia and Trump’s associates. Occupy Democrats packaged the dry, two-minute-long speech into a viral meme, and ThinkProgress wrote it up shortly thereafter. And if all that wasn’t enough, an AP report that Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort had worked for a billionaire close to Putin added fuel to the fire.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You knew that Comey had confirmed the existence of an FBI investigation, and that the agency had been looking into the Trump campaign since July. You also paid close attention to House Intelligence chairman Devin Nunes’s claim, two days after Comey’s testimony, that the Trump transition team had been surveilled, which you saw as a potential boon to the investigation, rather than proof of Trump’s wiretapping claim, as Nunes may have hoped.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You also thought Congress was onto something, but wondered whether they’d be able to handle it. After Nunes’s claims of surveillance (and a resulting fight with Schiff), Senator McCain justified his call for a special investigation by questioning the credibility of congressional democrats. A GQ story wondering if the Russia stuff “might be the biggest conspiracy in our nation’s history” was also a big hit in this bubble.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You thought the Obama administration were the real criminals. Nunes’s claim of surveillance got more play in this bubble as evidence of Obama’s malfeasance, while a USA Politics Today post highlighted a moment from Comey’s testimony when South Carolina representative Trey Gowdy claimed that Obama officials could face up to ten years in prison for leaking classified information about the Trump transition team to the press.
Michael Flynn Offers to Testify in Exchange for Immunity
A few days after the Times reports on an undisclosed meeting between Jared Kushner and a Russian banker, the Journal writes that Michael Flynn is willing to testify before congressional intelligence committees in exchange for immunity. That same day, Trump calls James Comey and asks him to “lift the cloud” of the Russia investigation, later tweeting that it’s a “witch hunt.”
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HIGHLY DEMOCRATIC AUDIENCE
If you only got your news from this bubble: You thought Flynn’s testimony would directly implicate Trump or Mike Pence. Publications in this bubble focused way less on the specifics of Flynn’s deal — he hadn’t actually been granted immunity yet — than on how it could lead to Trump’s impeachment. Accordingly, stories about Flynn’s offer got way less play than stories about Trump’s reaction to it, like an Occupy Democrats post that claimed Trump “stormed out” of a signing ceremony because of questions about Flynn.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were more focused on the big picture. Popular stories in this bubble detailed the ever-increasing threads between Russia and the election, including Senator Mark Warner’s claim that the Senate Intelligence Committee had found evidence that around 1,000 Russian trolls had targeted swing states with fake news in the run-up to the election. A BBC report also claimed that Comey had told members of Congress that the FBI was investigating whether a Russian diplomat in Washington might be a spy, an allegation that had been published in the Steele dossier.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were well-informed about the Flynn deal, as well as the fact that it wasn’t quite a deal yet. The Wall Street Journal report that broke the story made it clear that no one really knew what Flynn had to offer investigators, or even whether anyone would take him up on his offer in exchange for immunity.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You thought the mounting reports of Trump’s connections to Russia were evidence of nothing more than Democratic propaganda. A viral Rob Schneider tweet castigating Democrats for focusing on Russia to cover up their election losses got picked up by several places, including Breitbart and IJR. He tweeted it the day before news broke about Flynn, but still, it effectively drowned out anything actually happening with the investigation. Also popular was a write-up about WikiLeaks’s latest act, which claimed that accusations of Russian hacking were cover-ups of CIA hacking, as well as the longtime favorite Hillary uranium story.
Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein drafts a letter giving Trump a pretext to fire the FBI director, which the president promptly does — though a few days later, it’s reported that Trump, not Rosenstein, was the real cause of the dismissal. Also, at some point in this week, Sean Spicer gives an interview from some bushes, and Trump reveals classified information to the Russian ambassador in a meeting in which the president also calls Comey a “nut job.”
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HIGHLY DEMOCRATIC AUDIENCE
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were already looking past Comey’s firing, and anticipating his testimony in front of Congress. In a week when big publications with less partisan audiences, like the New York Times, were dominating the news cycle with already-dramatic news stories, there was less need for the injection of excitement that their more partisan cousins traditionally provide. After all, how can you juice up the story of Trump firing Comey?
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were exhausted. In a news-heavy week, the publications in this bubble were by far the most shared, thanks both to the huge importance of the stories — but also to their natural narrative tension and drama, which didn’t require much fluffing to find big audiences on Facebook.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were shocked and appalled by Trump’s decision to fire Comey. As usual for a breaking-news-heavy week, it was the straight news from publications with slightly more Republican audiences that got the most attention and was most widely shared — with the exception of a Forbes article from an outside “contributor” (the publication’s term for the nonemployee writers who fill out the site) with a decidedly anti-Trump slant.
If you only got your news from this bubble: Comey … who? Comey’s firing wasn’t touched upon at all by these publications, which were largely focused on a video of Condoleezza Rice on The View saying that the legitimacy of the election wasn’t in question. Meanwhile, the Gateway Pundit uncovered another thread in the great Russia conspiracy: Democratic Senator Mark Warner owns stock in a Russian search engine.
Rod Rosenstein names former FBI director Robert Mueller special counsel in the FBI’s investigation. Trump complains: “With all of the illegal acts that took place in the Clinton campaign & Obama Administration, there was never a special counsel appointed!” The Post reports that the investigation has identified Jared Kushner as a person of interest, and that Kushner had request a secret back channel with Ambassador Kislyak.
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If you only got your news from this bubble: More than anything, you were sure that Jared Kushner was going to get arrested. The biggest news in this bubble wasn’t Mueller’s appointment at all, but the news that Kushner had been named a “person of interest” — which was, of course, treated by this group of publications as proof positive that Kushner was guilty of, well, something. (The other viral story in this bubble? Pieces aggregating Time magazine’s illustrated D.C.–as–St. Basil’s cover.)
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were well-appraised of the status of the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign … but maybe more interested in an impolitic, and possibly joking, comment that former House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy made privately in 2016. The Post’s scoop about McCarthy saying he thinks “Putin pays” Trump was the most shared story of the week, beating out all breaking news, even that of Mueller’s appointment.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You recognized that the Russia investigation was wide, serious, and not looking good for Trump. Publications in this bubble — including wire services Reuters and McClatchy, which generally appear rarely among the most-shared stories — broke news about aspects of the Russia story beyond just the appointment of Mueller and McCarthy’s comments, and painted maybe the most detailed picture of the state of the investigation.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You knew that collusion between the Democrats and Russia extended not just to beloved Democratic representative Maxine Waters, but to non-Democrat Robert Mueller, who — as Truth and Action and the Gateway Pundit both reported, going off of emails spotlighted by WikiLeaks — once delivered recovered stolen uranium to Russia. How deep does this thing go?!
Comey, no longer director of the FBI, testifies in front of Congress about meetings in which Trump asked him to “let Flynn go.” Trump, in quick succession, claims to have been “vindicated,” accuses Comey of lying, and returns to his forte: complaining that Hillary Clinton has not been adequately investigated. On June 13, Jeff Sessions testifies to the Senate Intelligence Committee about his previously undisclosed meeting with Ambassador Kislyak, which he says he doesn’t remember.
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If you only got your news from this bubble: You were less interested in Comey’s testimony (and Trump’s reaction) than you were in Sessions’s. While recaps and livestreams of Comey’s testimony were popular in this bubble, Sessions’s testimony provided way more grist for the viral mill — in part because Comey’s testimony was covering events that had already been reported, and in part because, well, he’s just a more fun villain to this audience than Comey is a hero.
If you only got your news from this bubble: Comey’s testimony was low on your list of important stories this week. Publications from this bubble, like their more partisan-directed peers, found bigger audiences with stories about Jeff Sessions, Trump lawyer Christopher Wray, and Russian hackers, whose efforts during the last election, Bloomberg reported, were more widespread than had been previously believed. Comey’s testimony, set up as a blockbuster news event, just didn’t bring enough new information to outpace these other stories.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were, more than anything, interested in the possibility of a Russian cyberattack. To the extent that any stories from this bubble were widely shared (which is no great extent), they focused mostly on news of a possible election hack; interestingly, the same was true of publications with slightly more Democratic audiences, just on the other side of the dividing line.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You believed that the Comey testimony was, as the president himself said, total vindication of Trump. If you’re wondering where all of the Comey coverage was this week, it was mostly in this bubble, which took the largely non-revelatory testimony as evidence that Trump had done no wrong. Elsewhere in this bubble, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch became a new focus of widespread anger, probably because Trump tweeted that she should have been investigated.
The Times reports that during the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump Jr. was sent an email — from an English music publicist, naturally — offering “documents and information that would incriminate Hillary” as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Don Junior’s immediately iconic response: “If it’s what you say I love it.”
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HIGHLY DEMOCRATIC AUDIENCE
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were dancing in the end zone. On Facebook, this bubble was dominated by super cuts of Trump-administration officials saying the campaign had no connection to the Russian government, and by memes that prominently featured the word “treason.” Most of the actual writing was left to the publications with less-partisan audiences, which had plenty to write and report on.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were agog at Donald Trump Jr.’s stupidity, most likely. The Times’ meticulous reporting about Don Jr.’s goofily earnest email exchange was by far the most widely shared set of articles across social media, while other publications with mostly Democratic audiences drafted off of that scoop.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were, as usual, well-informed about the FBI’s ongoing investigation. The publications with slightly Republican audiences maintained their consistent, in-depth reporting on the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia in stories that rarely broke through to enormous audiences; as usual, The Hill found a semi-popular story by reporting on Republican criticisms of Trump.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You knew that Trump Jr. had met with a Russian lawyer — and you knew that either he was set up (according to Hannity), or it didn’t matter because Obama administration officials had met with this lawyer, too, and by the ancient legal doctrine of “samesies,” that meant that Don Jr. had done nothing wrong.
In an overall bad week for Jeff Sessions, President Trump tells the New York Times that he would not have picked Sessions if he’d known the Attorney General would recuse himself from the Russia investigation, and the Post then reports that Sessions — despite his claims to the contrary — had discussed campaign matters with Ambassador Kislyak. Meanwhile, Mueller’s investigation wore on, turning to Trump businesses as the president attempted to block him.
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If you only got your news from this bubble: You were telling everyone about the Magnitsky Act. The biggest story for highly Democratic audiences throughout the end of July was the testimony of financier Bill Browder, who discussed his friend Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in prison and who gave his name to the Magnitsky Act, a law meant to punish the Russian officials responsible for his death. Though there was little, if any, actual new information in the testimony, its thoroughness, and its focus on Natalia Veselnitskaya, the lawyer who met with Don Jr. during the campaign hoping to argue for a Magnitsky Act repeal, gave it currency among close followers of the Russia investigation.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were nervous about Trump’s impulses. Stories in this bubble this week covered Trump’s surprising outburst over Sessions’s recusal, and what was apparently growing discussion in the White House over how it could control or block the Mueller investigation — up to and including pardoning people who might eventually be charged by Mueller.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were wondering why Republicans weren’t more angry about Trump’s behavior. As was often the case for this bubble, stories that broke through concentrated on the processes of the Mueller investigation, and in particular, wishful-thinking stories about Republicans like Jeb Bush calling for more GOP attention to the investigation.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You weren’t thinking much about the Russia investigation at all. Without a single story dominating the news in other bubbles, the publications with highly Republican audiences found little success in particular — except, of course, in the kind of regular what-about-Obama and even-Schumer-says chum that remains their stock-in-trade.
TheWall Street Journal reports that Mueller has impaneled a grand jury in the Russia investigation as other details of the probe are revealed — among them that Mueller is looking closely at Michael Flynn’s ties to Turkey and at Trump’s own businesses. The Post later reports that Paul Manafort’s home had been raided by the FBI in July.
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If you only got your news from this bubble: You were into the news about Mueller’s probe, but you were more excited by other signs of conspiracy. Publications in this bubble claimed that West Virginia governor Jim Justice’s switch from Democrat to Republican was explained by the millions in taxes that he owes after a deal with a Russian coal company. A post from the Palmer Report found it meaningful that on the same day a Russian oligarch landed at Newark, Trump happened to fly into Bedminster, New Jersey, 30 miles away.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were following the many paths Mueller’s investigation was taking since he’d been granted a grand jury. The top story in this bubble was a CNN report that Mueller’s probe had widened its scope beyond election meddling to investigate financial ties between Trump associates and Russia. It was also revealed that Mueller’s investigators had asked the White House for documents pertaining to Flynn and were looking into whether he was paid by the Turkish government while advising Trump’s campaign. CNN also reported that the probe had subpoenaed documents pertaining to Don Jr.’s meeting with the Russians about Hillary Clinton.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were well-informed about Mueller’s request for a grand jury and its implications. This meant that the probe reached well beyond Flynn and into whether Russians actually interfered in the election, and empanelling a grand jury gave Mueller the power to subpoena documents and call witnesses. The Dallas Morning News also had a rare viral hit when it published a column detailing millions in campaign contributions by Ukrainian-born billionaire Len Blavatnik to the PACs of various lead Republicans.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You thought Mueller’s probe was just a ploy to take down Trump. Theories on how exactly Mueller might do this varied a little: He might try to get someone on a “process charge,” as argued by radio host Mark Levin; or try to use his buddy-buddy relationship with Comey to plant false testimony. However, there was still hope that he might be taken down: As Liberty Writers pointed out, Lindsey Graham was on patrol against pesky leaks out of Mueller’s grand jury.
Robert Mueller announces charges against three of Trump’s former campaign aides. Former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates were indicted on 12 charges, including conspiracy against the United States; and foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with Russian intermediaries proffering “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
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If you only got your news from this bubble: You were especially excited about the Papadopoulos plea deal, which seemed to show that definite collusion — not just shady business practices — likely took place. You were also incensed by Brexit leader Nigel Farage’s anti-Semitic claim that the “Jewish lobby” should be a larger source of worry for Americans than possible Russian election interference.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You knew that three of Trump’s associates had been indicted, and that the investigation was even wider than previously thought. You were also delighted by a CNN story detailing the misery Fox News staffers felt over their employer’s decision to cover just about anything else other than the Mueller charges.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were more focused on the Manafort and Gates charges, which tied them to a pro-Kremlin party in Ukraine. In another highly shared story, poll results found that Trump supporters didn’t care about any of this anyway: 79 percent of them thought Trump should remain in office even if collusion were proven.
If you only got your news from this bubble: News of the indictments got through to you, but you were still focused, as usual, on what the Dems were doing. The top story in this bubble, from Fox News, emphasized the fact that the Manafort and Gates charges were essentially about taxes, not collusion, and focused attention instead on the “real story”: the DNC’s funding of the Steele dossier. Right-leaning publications were also giddy over the news that one of the biggest Trump protests of the last year was organized by Russian operatives on Facebook.
Julia Ioffe of The Atlantic reported that WikiLeaks had been in contact with Don Jr., mostly through Twitter DMs, as late as July 2017. Of particular importance was that WikiLeaks offered its help, in turn asking Don Jr. to contest the election results if Trump lost, and to arrange for Julian Assange to become Australia’s ambassador to the U.S.
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If you only got your news from this bubble: What was probably the funniest Trump story of the year slid largely under the radar, possibly because it just didn’t seem damning enough. Then again, the top story in this bubble was a write-up of a Rachel Maddow segment implicating Erik Prince, Blackwater founder and Betsy DeVos’s brother, in the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You knew that WikiLeaks had been in contact with Don Jr. for months, and that Jared Kushner had also received emails about WikiLeaks in the run-up to the election. Politico reported that Kushner had initially failed to disclose these communications to the Senate Judiciary Committee, prompting questions about what he knew and when. Also popular was a BuzzFeed story about the FBI’s investigation into 60 wire transfers from the Russian Foreign Ministry to various embassies, and which contained a suspicious memo line: “to finance election campaign of 2016.”
If you only got your news from this bubble: You wanted to know exactly how this traced back to Trump. After The Atlantic published its bombshell, a Wall Street Journal reporter pointed out that President Trump had tweeted about John Podesta’s hacked emails about 15 minutes after WikiLeaks asked Don Jr. to do so. CNBC also reported that Kislyak had bragged in a Russian-language news interview that the list of Trump associates he’d met with was too long to list.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You had no idea what Don and WikiLeaks were getting up to. Breitbart seized on a Fox News segment in which the author of Clinton Cash claimed that there were audio recordings of Russian officials saying they were willing to use bribery, including donations to the Clinton Foundation, to get favors. Never mind that this didn’t mean anything about the Clintons; it still beat out any mention of WikiLeaks’s direct attempts to influence the U.S. election. What little Fox News did mention about the messages emphasized that Don Jr. released them himself after The Atlantic story.
As the New York Times reported, Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and became the first senior White House official to cut a deal with Mueller’s investigation into election interference. Of particular interest were reports that a “very senior member” of the transition team directed Flynn to initiate at least one of those conversations.
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If you only got your news from this bubble: You cared about the Flynn story insofar as it could take down Trump or Pence. The top story in this bubble was the Daily Beast’s aggregation of an ABC News report that claimed Trump himself had asked Flynn to make contact with the Russians, and a Mother Jones story implicating Pence was also popular.
If you only got your news from this bubble: You were well-informed about the details of Flynn’s indictment and plea deal. The New York Times also reported that Jared Kushner may have directed Flynn to initiate one of his conversations with Kislyak, while ABC News reported that Flynn was prepared to testify that he was directed by Trump himself to make contact with the Russians to plan working together to defeat ISIS in Syria.
If you only got your news from this bubble: Like the highly Democratic bubble, you were also interested in what this could mean for Trump. As repackaged by The Hill, ABC News’ story about Trump’s supposed directive to Flynn was the most popular story here, along with Comey’s Tweet: “But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” It was embarrassingly earnest, but might it also mean that Mueller was onto something?
If you only got your news from this bubble: You cared less about the Flynn story than about how the mainstream media was supposedly butchering it. Fox News seized on the incorrect claim made by ABC News’ Brian Ross that Trump had directed Flynn to make contact with the Russians while still a candidate (as Ross later clarified, this conversation occurred after Trump had been elected). An erroneous report from the Gateway Pundit that Flynn’s Russia contacts were somehow Obama’s fault also racked up a ton of shares.
