Thread by @andreasmoun

Mapping #Muskan: A protest amplified by Pakistan

There are many false and misleading news spread over the internet on Muskan. Such as Salman Khan-Aamir Khan and #Turkey gave a rewardis to hijab girl Muskan.

Muskan, an 18-year-old college girl became the heated topic of discussion on Twitter and other social media sites overnight. Moreover, #Muskan and other related hashtags are the most trending Hashtags these days.

Many national and international personalities and firms had shared their opinion on the topic. In our report ­#HijabRow – A Row of Communalism, we have covered the ongoing controversy regarding Hijab.

Furthermore, in this exclusive report on Muskan, we will tell the readers the genesis of the ongoing controversy and who is involved to amplify the same.

The Start of The #Muskan Controversy
This incident took place at the government PU college in UDUPI, Karnataka. PU college banned the students wearing Hijab to attend the classes.

The Start of The #Muskan ControversyThis incident took place at the government PU college in UDUPI, Karnataka. PU college banned the students wearing Hijab to attend the classes.

Meanwhile, a video got viral on the internet. In the video, a girl was wearing a hijab parking her scooty and walking along. And, then some men started heckling her and started shouting the slogan of “Jai Shri Ram.”

In response, the Hijab girl identified as Muskan started shouting the slogan of Allah hu Akbar. Some people are describing it as the supreme act of bravery. After this, there was fierce politics on this issue.

Stream Of Fake News On Muskan
There are many false and misleading news spread over the internet on Muskan. Such as Salman Khan-Aamir Khan and Turkey gave a rewardis to hijab girl Muskan. Further, many fake pictures of her got viral. Moreover, There was a girl with Rahul Gandhi.

People claim she is the same girl involved in the HijabRow controversy in Karnataka. DFRAC has already covered many fake news on Muskan.

Muskan On Social Media
Twitter was flooded with many Tweets related to the hijab controversy and Muskan. Many famous personalities came out in her support.

Soon, the battle between college authorities who were imposing dress code and the student who are adamant

to wear Hijab went to the High court. A hearing on this matter is pending but the issue soon caught high flames on social media. Moreover, we can see many different narratives of this incident. Some are relating it to feminism while others are describing this as a matter of

freedom of practicing one’s religion. Meanwhile, some people are taking the advantage of the ongoing heated controversy to promote their propaganda. In this exclusive report, we will show some of these accounts and how they are fooling the common people.

Accounts Creation Timeline
In this section, we can see the time of the creation of accounts that interacted with the hashtag to add more fuel to the controversy.

According to the data, there are more than 125 new accounts created for this hashtag on 9th Feb 2022, just when the hashtag was at its peak.

Many Muskans On TwitterSurprisingly, we cannot find the real Muskan on the Twitter. But, we did find many fake Muskan tweeting regarding the ongoing Hijab Protest and working on their different agenda.

The account AmanTweets60 changed to @muskanind3467. And, after that, this account tweeted as many false and misleading tweets as it can. As we can see below, in one of the tweets this fake account have thanked the Taliban, and in another, it had thanked Khalistan.

The account has also posted a tweet mentioning Jinnah. Furthermore, the previous location of this account was Pakistan.

This user joined Twitter in December 2019. Very cleverly, it had deleted all its tweets before the 8th of February, 2022, the day on which this protest starts. After that, started tweeting all about the Hijab protest.

Similarly, there are many other fake accounts by the name of Muskan like @muskankhan_0786, @musk_a_n, @muskan1O, @MuskanKhanbibi, and many more.

Accounts Interacted the most
Below graph shows who were the accounts that interacted the most with the hashtags.

@SofikulRng interacted with over 40 times followed by @khawar_0fficial, @RealUsamaJ, @krakkistaaan with more than 35 tweets each. The top five accounts that interacted the most with the hashtag are from Pakistan.

Hashtags UsedAlong with the #Muskan hashtag, there were other hashtags too running. Example- #allahuakbar, #MuslimGirls, #HijabRow, #Sherni, etc.

Accounts Mentioned
The graph shows who were the accounts that were mentioned or tagged with the hashtag #Muskan. Accounts that got mostly tagged include, @Malala, @ImranKhanPTI, @nshuklaindia, @narendramodi, etc.

The geographical map shows the rush coming from different countries on this hashtag. The maximum number of users who tweeted on this hashtag were from Pakistan, with more than 3000 users tweeting on the topic.

Conclusion

That is to say, Pakistan and many other international forces have done a lot to give heat in the ongoing HijabRow controversy.

More here dfrac.org/en/2022/02/14/…