Not long after word got out that Iranian general Qasem Soleimani had been killed in a US airstrike, Trump's Twitter account began receiving a high volume of replies containing #HardRevenge. We found 4477 replies/mentions using the hashtag from 2544 accounts.
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
@ZellaQuixote The #HardRevenge tweets seem to have started with @ghaderi62, the editor of the Tehran Times. It received little traction at first, but took off after a couple of hours. We didn't detect much in the way of automation, but some aspects don't look particularly organic.
@ZellaQuixote @ghaderi62 The accounts tweeting #HardRevenge are disproportionately recent creations: 1285 of 2544 (50.5%) were created since the beginning of 2019, and 91 were created in the 18 hours following Soleimani's death.
@ZellaQuixote @ghaderi62 The 91 new accounts seem quite singleminded in their mission: the English hashtags they use all relate to Soleimani and/or retribution against the USA or Israel for his demise. They primarily retweet Iranian government and media and reply to US officials such as Trump and Pompeo.
