Thread 1/ For Sudan and Gulf watchers. Below is a brief analysis of a 'Sudanese' sockpuppet network that includes at least 26 accounts. It seems to exist mostly to promote the UAE's role in #Sudan, and occasionally have swipes at the Muslim Brotherhood. #disinformation
2/ The accounts are old Twitter accounts have been bought or hacked. Many are as old as 2009, but only have around 50 tweets or so. They were repurposed in around December 2021, a few weeks prior to the resignation of Sudanese PM Abdalla Handok
3/ Some still have their old names, such as Will Reed 73 (aka Halla Mashael) or Sexy Thickums (aka Manasik Omer).Again, most are pictures of attractive women with good quality banner photos depicting Sudan. This 'influencer' aesthetic is likely to drive engagement #disinformation
4/ The accounts occasionally criticise the Muslim Brotherhood, with the now familiar tropes saying they are the source of terror in the region.
5/ However, their most commonly used words are 'Sudan' and 'the Emirates' (as in the UAE). ِAnd you can see why below, the accounts spend a lot of time re-affirming the good relationship between the UAE, and more importantly, UAE's assistance to Sudan #disinformation#propaganda
6/ Each account has probably tweeted around 50 times since they were repurposed in December. The network was perhaps at least double in size (at least 50). Another tweep @elsadig_atif spotted some of the fake in December and presumably reported them.
7/ The network looks similar to others I have tweeted about in the past few days. Similar modus operandi (attractive profile pics, all use web app, hacked accounts), UAE/Egypt/Saudi leaning stance. Anyway, that's it for now, hope you enjoyed! #Sudan#disinformation
8/ Addendum - the accounts involved >
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
1/ 🧵This graph shows X posts by impressions in the first six hours after the Magdeburg attack. Specifically these are posts falsely attributing the attack to an Islamist terror attack or a Syrian, or using it as an opportunity to attack immigration or muslims #disinformation
2/ The usual suspects are there - that is, the anti-Islam disinfluencers (routine spreaders of disinformation). As you can see, one of the most widely viewed is @visegrad24 - who shared at least 6 posts falsely claiming the attacker was an Islamist
3/ The posts falsely claiming that the attacker was a Muslim or Islamist gained at least 38,000,000 views. False claims that he was Syrian resulted in around 8.4million views (remember this is just an approx 6 hour period).
🧵1/ I analysed the headline and lead paragraph of 536 English news articles including the terms "Maccabi" + "Amsterdam" and classified them using Claude 3.5 Sonnet to determine how many framed Israelis as victims or non-Israelis as primary victims (as well as both).
2/ The results are fairly striking. 65% of articles frame Israelis as the victim, while only 5% frame Non-Israelis as victims. 24% are neutral while 9% framed both groups as victims. Quite clear the media emphasised violence as anti-Israeli and antisemitic, especially early on
3/ There isn't much evidence too of corrective framing at this point, although a small increase in neutral framing a week after the incident. Israeli victimhood was categorised as emphasis of violence initiated by non-Israelis, and focus on anti-Israeli or antisemitic violence
🧵 1/ Part of understanding what is going on in Amsterdam is also to understand the coordinated anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant campaigns run with huge amounts of money targeting Europe. Here's a short private Eye article about an investigation I did with @SohanDsouza
2/ Here's a write-up by @karamballes on the campaign in @BylineTimes "Disinformation Campaign on Social Media Reached More Than 40 Million People – but Meta ‘Alarmingly’ Hasn't Revealed the Culprits' bylinetimes.com/2024/08/30/qat…
@karamballes @BylineTimes 3/ ...How a covert influence campaign helped Europe’s far right
Our findings about the shadowy multi-platform operation attacking Qatar and stoking Islamophobia to further its far-right agenda in Europe and beyond call for immediate action. aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/…
🧵🚨1/ This is nuts. After mysteriously deleting a package covering the Amsterdam protests, Sky News have put up a new version. The new version completely changes the thrust to emphasise that the violence was antisemitic. See the opening screenshot change below
2/Even the tweet accompanying the video has changed. It has explicitly shifted from mentioning anti-Arab slogans to removing the phrase "anti-Arab" and using antisemitism. It also removes mention of vandalism by Israeli fans. An extremely clear editorial shift!
3/ They have also inserted into the video, right after the opening footage of Dutch Prime Minister condemning antisemitsm. This was not in the original video.
1/ If you break down the BBC's live reporting of what happened in Amsterdam, you can see the disproportionate attention it pays to Maccabi fans and Israelis as victims, with far less attention paid to the actions of Maccabi fans. Here are the sources interviewed.
2/ In terms of mentions of Arab, Dutch or other Ajax fans, there is very little emphasis on Arab safety, with the majority of coverage focused on Maccabi fans as victims. There are vox pops with fans, but very little interaction with non-Maccabi people.
3/ The language used to describe the attacks on the Maccabi fans is also much stronger, ranging from pogroms to brutal and shocking. Similar terms aren't use for the anti-Arab racism.
🚨1/ This New York Times piece is wild. Let's go through it.
Firstly, the lede is an emphasis that attacks in Amsterdam were based on antisemitism, yet it cites no evidence of this, but DOES cite evidence of anti-Arab chants.
2/ The claims of antisemitism are based primarily on the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, who tweeted that the attacks were antisemitic. Note - the Dutch Prime Minister didn't call out anti-Arab or anti-Palestinian racism from Maccabi fans.
3/ The piece links to an Amsterdam police statement to talk about the violence - although the police statement doesn't mention anything about antisemitism.