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In October 2018, a cellphone video of a Brooklyn woman calling 911 to claim a 9-year-old black boy grabbed her rear went viral on social media, becoming one of a series of videos that activists and journalists seized upon as an example of the everyday racism faced by minorities in America.
That woman became known as “Cornerstore Caroline.” Other individuals who became the subjects of similar stories would be known by nicknames such as “Basketball Becky” or “Taco Truck Tammy.”
Now, Clemson University researchers have found those videos received instrumental early social media promotion from inauthentic accounts, some of which have since been removed by Twitter and linked by U.S. intelligence to Russia’s efforts to stoke racial tensions in America.