[2nd #Thread on Iraq] 1/ Earlier I posted an analysis of a Twitter campaign in Iraq calling for international attention and revolution. It was in English. The following thread is of the Arabic hashtags #العراق_تنتفض and #العراق_ينتفض (Iraq is revolting masc and fem.).
2/ I analysed around 18,000 unique accounts tweeting on either of the hashtags. 1021 accounts were created in September and October 2019. That's around 6%. 334 of these accounts were just created in the three days of October! It may or may not be unusual that most of the accounts 
3/ started being created in September 2019. This is common when we see influence campaigns, or indeed samples, as bots tend to have short lives and often created shortly before a campaign, and die upon campaigning. It could indicate there was a pre-emptive campaign, but not
4/ not necessarily. Interestingly, most of the accounts tweeting on this hashtag are Saudi-based by a long way. (approx, 3,300) We know Saudi twitter is dominant in Arabic language (sadly as its a highly authoritarian state). Iraq is second, with a lot fewer, with around 62
5/ So essentially if we assume user reported location is vaguely accurate, and that error is randomly distributed, most of the accounts tweeting on the hashtag are based in Saudi or are -Saudi related. In the English hashtag, one of the early tweeters posted a lot of Saudi+Iraq
6/ flags. Don't know if this is significant. Next I will just post a quick network graph to determine who are the bigger influences on the hashtag.
7/ Ok so the network analysis reveals some very interesting things. Below I arranged those using the #العراق_تنتفض (Iraq is revolting) hashtag into a network graph by 'out-degree'. Essentially this means the more the accounts tweet the hashtag, the bigger the node. As we can see
8/ the yellowish community seems to be the noisiest. The person using the hashtag most is @mooha_8018. You'd expect Mooha maybe to be established, but they are not. The account was created in September 2019, and has a Saudi flag and pic of King Salman as the profile pic!
@mooha_8018 9/ This doesn't appear to be an anomaly. The second most active account @mohamme99178099 also tweets pro-Saudi content, anti-Iran content, and anti-Turkey content... I am not going go through all of them but I can share the data of course. Also you get the picture...
@mooha_8018 @mohamme99178099 10/ So it would seem that, whatever is happening in Iraq, there accounts that appear to be connected to Saudi enflaming tensions in the country, and using it as an opportunity to spread ideas related to Saudi-foreign policy. The question of course is whether what happens
11/ on social media is an adjunct to foreign policy, or opportunistic. Indeed does the campaign indicate some other influence activities going offline, or is it it's own thing, opportunistically exploiting existing tensions in Iraq? These are points worth considering. Thanks!
