Blame it on Iran, Qatar, and Turkey: An analysis of a Twitter and Facebook operation linked to Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia

<a href="https://embed.stanford.edu/iframe/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpurl.stanford.edu%2Fwp281db2531" class="su-underline">Show Content</a>

Abstract/Contents

Abstract: In December 2019, the Stanford Internet Observatory alerted Twitter to anomalous behavior in the hashtag ايبيلنئاخجارسلا”) Sarraj the traitor of Libya”); Fayez al-Sarraj is Libya’s Prime Minister. The distribution pattern of the hashtag looked suspicious, and the images that appeared with the hashtag looked similar to those that Twitter removed in September 2019 as part of a takedown of a prior state-backed influence operation originating in the UAE and Egypt. Twitter confirmed that many accounts creating content with the “Sarraj the traitor of Libya” hashtag were related to that prior network, and took them down. Following extensive additional investigation based on the tip, Twitter shared with us a network of 36,523,977 tweets from 5,350 accounts that have been taken down. Facebook then shared with us 55 Pages linked to this Twitter network; we analyzed these Pages before Facebook removed them. We title this report “Blame it on Iran, Qatar, and Turkey”, given the prominent theme of lumping blame on these three countries for everything from terrorism throughout the Arab world to the disappearance of Malaysia Air Flight 370 to the spread of COVID-19.

Type of resource	text
Publication date	November 11, 2022; April 2, 2020

DOI	https://doi.org/10.25740/wp281db2531
Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/wp281db2531

Use and reproduction: User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND).

Preferred citation: Grossman, S., H, K., DiResta, R., Kheradpir, T., and Miller, C. (2022). Blame it on Iran, Qatar, and Turkey: An analysis of a Twitter and Facebook operation linked to Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/wp281db2531. https://doi.org/10.25740/wp281db2531.

Stanford Internet Observatory, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies

Loading usage metrics...