Ever since Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, tweets have been popping up falsely equating his situation with that of Julian Assange (who is quite alive). The topic has gained momentum since it became public that Assange has been charged.
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
We downloaded tweets containing "Khashoggi" and "Assange", resulting in 3539 tweets from 2679 accounts since the time of the murder. The smaller spike back in October is largely due to @LeeCamp's tweet pictured in the first tweet of this thread.
Retweet network for Khashoggi + Assange. The cluster pushing the false equivalence center on @sahouraxo; many of these accounts routinely promote #FalseFlag theories re Syria. @JackPosobiec joins them. The cluster centered on @RVAwonk contains accounts pointing out the fallacy.
Who tweeted comparisons between Khashoggi's murder and Assange's situation first? This chart shows the first 20 accounts to do so since the murder. It's mostly a mixture of false equivalence, innuendo, and conspiracy theories, although there are a couple skeptical tweets.
Let's take a look at the media sources linked by accounts posting Khashoggi/Assange tweets . RT is the most prominent. Rounding out the set are a mixture of mainstream and fringier news sites. What happens if we look solely at the "false equivalence" portion of the network?
Answer: the media landscape looks very different. RT's slice of the pie grows, and almost all of the remaining sources are right-wing conspiracy sites (orange).
I've been calling @JackPosobiec an #AltWanker for almost two years, but apparently pointing out his presence in a dodgy retweet network is what it takes to really trigger him.
