Thread by @marcowenjones

[Thread] 1/ Very interesting campaign to boycott the Dubai Expo 2020 - the campaign is motivated by the UAE's presence in Yemen. It's a dense network, involving around 3400 Twitter accounts. It was started by @shaif100, whose bio describes him as a 'colonel in the Yemen ....

@shaif100 2/ electronic army'. It was then seeded by a few other accounts mentioning dozens of other accounts, presumably to prompt them to use the hashtag and get the trend running. The trend was in English and Arabic, obviously intended for a local and international audience

@shaif100 3/ One of the biggest influencers on the hashtag is @anesyem , who interestingly, describes himself as the 'Consulting Journalist for Yemeni Embassy in Riyadh Chairman of Aden Centre for Studies'.

@shaif100 @anesyem 4/ A huge proportion of the accounts were created in September 2019, over 400 - well above the average. They have tweeted on topics from "sisi_out", to justice for Khashoggi, to boycotting goods from the UAE. 20 of the accounts have 'Yemen electronic army' in their bios

@shaif100 @anesyem 5/ Most of the accounts report their location as Yemen. The hashtag was active on 20th December, with most of the content being retweets (around 70%). Only 6% of the content were original tweets. The rest are replies, mentions or mentions in retweet