State-Sponsored Trolls — Reddit Comments

A Reddit (state-sponsored troll comments) dataset of 7,097 Reddit comments from verified Russian state-sponsored troll accounts, collected by Zannettou et al. via Reddit API (2019). Each record contains comment body, subreddit, author, score, controversiality, created_utc, gilded, parent_id. 7,097 Reddit comments from verified Russian IRA troll accounts across 649 subreddits — enabling study of coordinated influence operations on Reddit. Suitable for information operations detection, coordinated inauthentic behavior, Reddit manipulation analysis, troll comment classification, cross-platform influence campaign research.

#Coordinated inauthentic behavior#Internet research agency#Russia#Troll

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Analytics

The interactive network needs JavaScript.

· graph.json

Node size is centrality, colour is community. Hover a node for details; click one to isolate its community.

808
Nodes
1.6K
Edges
2.45e-03
Density
10
Components
-0.3807
Assortativity
0.0%
Reciprocity
505
Bridges
Most central nodes
r/AskReddit0.057
r/worldnews0.05328
r/funny0.05204
r/news0.03594
r/aww0.0347
r/gifs0.0347
r/pics0.03222
r/politics0.03098
r/CryptoCurrency0.0285
r/Jokes0.02602
Content metrics

7,097 records scored · min–maxmean ± 0.675 σ (the interquartile range if the values are roughly normal)mean

scoreμ 11.65 ± 281.6
min -146max 10K
controversiality3.5% true
true 3.5%false 96.5%
6.8
Flesch–Kincaid grade
US school grade level
7.2
Automated readability index
Frequent terms
likepeopledonthinkgoodknowtimerightwaygreatneedwantbitcoinnewsmoneycryptothankstielovegoingnewbetterlifeworldusepoliceyeahtrumpsuregotnicethingbestbuysaiddaymanlotthingslooksoldrealdoesnbigcountrypointtiesactuallyfeelguy
Topic clusters

Topic 0

crypto
tie
bitcoin
buy
coin
like
money
invest

Topic 1

cute
cat
love
look
like
wow
nice
good

Topic 2

cop
police
people
black
right
think
officer
racist

Topic 3

life
help
way
need
die
day
happen
win

Topic 4

trump
hillary
clinton
obama
vote
president
donald
candidate

Topic 5

fuck
funny
ass
dick
joke
shit
bad
fake

Topic 6

russia
country
isis
russian
think
christian
terrorist
religion

Topic 7

thank
post
project
good
know
think
job
interesting
Top hashtags
#13
#markets2
#31
#87101
#china1
#cococow1
#colourequality1
#columbianchemicals1
#comment1
#freshnews1
#hodlgang1
#hot1
#justpolicestatethings1
#juststeelseriesthings1
#lanbot1
#latest1
#news1
#obamalegacy1
#plot1
#range_and_habitat1
Top emoji
🤔3
💚2
💦2
😅2
😍2
🌼1
🍆1
👅1
👍1
😋1
🤤1

Computed over the full corpus.

Record

Catalog key
state-sponsored-trolls-reddit
Authors
Zannettou, Savvas; Caulfield, Tristan; Setzer, William; Sirivianos, Michael; Stringhini, Gianluca; Blackburn, Jeremy
Year
2019
Source paper
Who Let The Trolls Out?: Towards Understanding State-Sponsored Trolls
DOI / arXiv
10.1145/3292522.3326016
License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) (CC-BY-4.0)
Records
7,097
Nodes
808
Edges
1,597 (directed)
Attributes
nodes have no attributes; edges have no attributes
Languages
en
Collected
2015-2018 (2010s)
Tasks
Bot detection inferred
From the graph: link prediction, community detection
Region
Russia · Europe (inferred: named in the description)

Provenance

Originally published at
https://zenodo.org/records/2558433 link checked
Hosted copy
Mirrored on echo.directory on 2026-10-21, 37.2 MB across 8 files. Checksums in MANIFEST.json.

Citations

Who Let The Trolls Out?: Towards Understanding State-Sponsored Trolls
Savvas Zannettou, T. Caulfield, William Setzer, M. Sirivianos, G. Stringhini
Journal Article · Web Science Conference · 2018

181
citations
well cited
9
influential citations
5% of all citations

Cited by

Show all 10

Citation data from Semantic Scholar, retrieved 2026-10-22.

How to cite

BibTeX

@misc{echo2026,
  title  = {ECHO: Exploratory Compendium of Humanity Online},
  author = {Switzer, Braden and Zafarani, Reza},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://echo.directory},
  note   = {Syracuse University}
}

@inproceedings{Zannettou_2019,
  series     = {WebSci ’19},
  title      = {Who Let The Trolls Out?: Towards Understanding State-Sponsored Trolls},
  url        = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3292522.3326016},
  doi        = {10.1145/3292522.3326016},
  booktitle  = {Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Web Science},
  publisher  = {ACM},
  author     = {Zannettou, Savvas and Caulfield, Tristan and Setzer, William and Sirivianos, Michael and Stringhini, Gianluca and Blackburn, Jeremy},
  year       = {2019},
  month      = June,
  pages      = {353–362},
  collection = {WebSci ’19}
}

APA

Switzer, B., & Zafarani, R. (2026). ECHO: Exploratory Compendium of Humanity Online [Data repository]. Syracuse University. https://echo.directory

Zannettou, S., Caulfield, T., Setzer, W., Sirivianos, M., Stringhini, G., & Blackburn, J. (2019). State-Sponsored Trolls — Reddit Comments [Data set]. https://doi.org/10.1145/3292522.3326016

MLA

Switzer, Braden, and Reza Zafarani. ECHO: Exploratory Compendium of Humanity Online. Syracuse University, 2026, echo.directory.

Zannettou, Savvas, et al. State-Sponsored Trolls — Reddit Comments. 2019, doi.org/10.1145/3292522.3326016.

BibTeX · RIS · CSL-JSON

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