SPECIAL REPORT: A new study finds that bots and MAGA supporters have been pushing the #IraniansDetestSoleimani hashtag. By @AlanRMacLeod mintpressnews.com/study-bots-mag…
The hashtag #IraniansDetestSoleimani remained one of the most popular amongst users in the US this week. But similar viral sentiment was not expressed across the Middle East, least of all on Iranian Twitter, leaving one to wonder, who are these Iranian Soleimani haters?
Professor Marc Owen Jones of Hamad bin Khalifa University in Qatar studied 60,000 tweets from nearly 10,000 accounts using the hashtag and found that the most common phrases in those users’ biographies were “Make America Great Again” and “Trump."
https://twitter.com/marcowenjones/status/1214578080087453700
He also studied the most frequent users of the hashtag, who were most vociferously voicing their opposition to the slain general and found they had typical machine-generated usernames with a common first name followed by a string of numbers, and had extremely generic profiles.
This is an increasingly common occurrence in conflicts, as groups attempt to control the narrative on the new online battlefront. In November, thousands of bots boosted a Spanish-language hashtag which meant in English, “there is no coup in #Bolivia." mintpressnews.com/how-mass-bot-n…
Although MSM have labeled #Soleimani as a “blood-soaked,” “terrorist mastermind,” there is little evidence to suggest most Iranians share the same opinion. A 2019 survey found he "remains the most popular Iranian public figure,” with 59% of Iran viewing him “very favorably." 
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