I must admit that although I follow most topics related to online activity closely, the following story was new to me.
How do you combat foreign online influence in a country that values an open Internet? Clint Watts (author of Messing with the Enemy) suggests that one strategy is to make visible the activity of foreign actors. Watts and a few colleagues with a little support from the German Marshall Fund of the United States have created a dashboard displaying the Twitter activity of Russian bots and trolls. The data are available from the site Hamilton 68. The organization is open in explaining their methodology.
The effort to detail the output of the Russian controlled sources is an effort to bring attention to how Russian information influencers would like to slant the perception of U.S. viewers. Watts questions the lack of interest by U.S. politicians in the work of academics skilled in evaluating external influence and why the U.S. government has not taken steps such as his to make clear the external agenda forwarded online.
Watts does admit these data must be interpreted with caution.