Viva la #Resistance? Now-Suspended Twitter Accounts from Iran Claim #Resistance Personas in US Politics and Middle Eastern Affairs
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- On September 30, 2020, based on a tip from the FBI, Twitter announced the removal of 130 accounts originating in Iran that were “attempting to disrupt the public conversation during the first 2020 US Presidential Debate.” On February 23, 2020, Twitter announced that “after the final investigation was complete,” it suspended a total of 238 accounts operating from Iran for “violations of various platform manipulation policies.” Twitter shared the full 238 accounts with the Stanford Internet Observatory on February 12, 2020. The now-suspended accounts produced 560,571 tweets, with the earliest activity dating back to 2009. The majority of accounts, however, were created between May and October 2020 and were shortly thereafter removed by Twitter. Tweets in the takedown were primarily in English, Spanish, Indonesian and Farsi. A smaller amount of content was in Arabic and French. The bulk of the accounts fell into an English-language cluster; they claimed to be Americans and shared divisive content related to the 2020 election and American politics. Most of the purported Americans claimed to be members of the #Resistance against Donald Trump, though a few claimed to be Trump supporters. These accounts did not have a significant impact on broader discourse during the September 29, 2020 presidential debate, but a few of the #Resistance accounts managed to get traction on earlier tweets. Twitter also took down other accounts operating from Iran beyond those purporting to be Americans. One notable example is the handle for HispanTV, a Spanish-language arm of Iranian state broadcasting. Unlike the American cluster, HispanTV’s connection to Iran is overt. Another cluster tweeted in English and Indonesian, and used mass hashtags and plagiarized content while advocating for Palestinian causes. Accounts in the takedown exhibited different traits and should not be treated as a monolith; they were broadly aligned, however, in supporting narratives favored by the Iranian regime. This is far from the first time social media platforms have removed activity originating in Iran for violating platform manipulation policies. Operations have impersonated anti-Netanyahu “Black Flag” protestors, hacked accounts to tweet about the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, and even impersonated American candidates running for office. Notably, Citizen Lab uncovered a relatively sophisticated Iran-aligned operation that created inauthentic personas, impersonated media outlets, and published articles on a number of websites. Accounts in the takedown we analyzed were not as sophisticated as personas in what Citizen Lab called the “Endless Mayfly” campaign, but they supported narratives that align with past Iranian information operations and broader Iranian foreign policy objectives. In addition to their focus on American domestic politics, accounts in the takedown included pro- Palestinian advocacy, anti-Saudi rhetoric, and critiques of US engagements in the Middle East.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date modified | December 5, 2022 |
| Publication date | January 5, 2022; February 23, 2021 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Goldstein, Josh A. | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Hundley, Lindsay | |
| Contributor | Thiel, David |
Subjects
| Subject | Twitter, takedown, |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Report |
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Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Goldstein, J. and Hundley, L. (2021). Viva la #Resistance? Now-Suspended Twitter Accounts from Iran Claim #Resistance Personas in US Politics and Middle Eastern Affairs. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/dk638pj7129
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Stanford Internet Observatory, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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