[thread] 1/ Top trend in #Qatar is 'scandal of Qatar museums'. The hashtag is clearly platform manipulation from several hundred fake accounts. See below for an analysis #disinformation
2/ It's not quite clear why Qatar Museums is being targeted and by whom, but the hashtag is astroturfing. See below.
1st )App diversity is extremely low. 95% of the hashtag are tweets sent from Twitter web app (purple), with 4% from Android, and less than 1% from iphone
3/ Typically Gulf hashtags are dominated by iphones, and certainly mobile phones. Twitter Web App at 95% is itself suspicious.
2nd) the tweet timing is highly anomalous and likely automated. The below graph shows spikes in which certain accounts are RT'd rapidly in minute
4/ long bursts. Those bursts of RT's are likely to be bot network. As you can see, each burst is a group of Twitter accounts boosting one account at a time.
5/ And
3rd) The same spikes are ALSO sent from Twitter Web App. So that means we are seeing at least three anomalies - rapid RTs in short bursts, rapid RTs of specific accounts in order, and all those RTs being done on Twitter Web App. The accounts themselves are also odd
6/ One of most retweeted is a video from an account with 117 thousand followers who is following 0 people. Despite that, the person only has one tweet on their profile, with their remaining tweets having being deleted. Many of the followers look fake (at a glance).
7) Many of the other accounts also look suspicious. This one, for example, is the most central and active on the hashtag. However, it was created in 2012 but only has 76 tweets, mostly retweets probably done recently to make it look active.
8) As I said, it's not quite clear why Qatar Museums is being targeted. It could be a person with a specific grievance, political/religious groups who oppose Qatar Museums, or some sort of state-backed operation. This kind of thing was common in the blockade but never really
9) stopped. Anyway, what is clear is that it's astroturfing. Whoever is doing it is trying to cause public outrage around the use of public wealth by simulating public discontent. Most 'real' people don't seem to be getting involved with the it
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