Prigozhin’s Propaganda Team: The St Petersburg Internet Research Agency (2013–2021)

Existing research on the now defunct St Petersburg Internet Research Agency (Agentstvo internet-issledovanii-IRA), owned by now-deceased oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, has focused on content analysis.Little is known about its organisation.This study uses 350 CVs of former IRA employees to provide insights into its structure and evolution (2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018)(2019)(2020)(2021).It shows that the IRA recruited mainly young, inexperienced individuals from St Petersburg universities, with a spike in recruitment when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.This study details the IRA's hierarchical structure and integration into the Russian media labour market, providing a framework for understanding similar disinformation organisations worldwide for the benefit of policymakers and researchers.Prigozhin's digital influence empire, which included the IRA and his media company, Patriot Media Group, was dissolved following the mutiny led by Prigozhin's Wagner Group in June 2023. ACROSS THE WESTERN WORLD, THE NETWORK OF RUSSIAN legal entities known as the Internet Research Agency (Agentstvo internet-issledovanii-IRA) gained widespread notoriety during its decade of operation. The initial discovery of the IRA by Russian and Western