1/ [Thread] Strange hashtag called #KhameneiVirus - It's an anti-Khameini influence campaign, with many calling for sanctions to be maintained - which seems like an unlikely position given the current crisis. Unsurprisingly it seems like inauthentic behaviour. A lot of accounts
2/ were created in January 2020 - perhaps not surprising given the killing of a Soleimani and the shooting down of the Ukrainian plane (such events can create a natural gravitation towards Twitter or be exploited too by political actors - I think the latter) #KhameneiVirus 
3/ What I tend to notice about Iran-related Twitter storms is the way such spikes tend to endure,. The number of different apps producing tweet is relatively low for a large sample (around 20,000 interactions) as is the density (number of accounts compared to total number
4/ of tweets. Indeed, the sample of around 20,000 interactions involves around 3,300 accounts - suggesting a relatively small number of accounts generating a lot of activity. The majority of content is RTs 60% (which is frequently the case on a trending hashtag).
5/ According to trendogate it also seems to be trending in all parts of the US - which strikes me as unusual for what seems to be a rather niche trend - it's as if someone wanted everyone across every major US city to see the trend...
6/ The fact the hashtag was tweeted by David Adam Javerbaum (@TheTweetOfGod) - who has around 6.1 million followers
7/ Here's a visual from TrendsMap - seems to suggest the intensity of the tweets are in the UK and the US. Also Nigeria - caveat: I am not sure how the locational data is processed here (if it's user input or some other means - I presume it is )
8/ As a note: there will be more people tweeting on the hashtag - but samples are usually indicative of the overall density of the network - so it would generally seem there is a low user to activity (total tweets) ratio
9/ There are also a lot of people calling out the hashtag for its cynical opportunism/callousness
10/ Here's the answer to the question raised about Trend Maps determines location
11/ Another caveat is it still does not seem how Twitter determines location - likely a combination of ip, user input location, potential time zone
