Marc Owen Jones Profile picture
Assoc Prof @HBKU | Author: Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East & Political Repression in Bahrain | PhD @durham_uni | NR Sen Fellow @dawnmenaorg
@littlegravitas@c.im 🇺🇦 🇪🇺 🇮🇱 🇵🇸 #FBPE Profile picture Dame Chris🌟🇺🇦😷 #RejoinEU #FBPE #GTTO🔶️ Profile picture eDo Profile picture Annette Profile picture Neal Rauhauser Profile picture 36 subscribed
Nov 27 11 tweets 5 min read
1) OK something very strange has happened here. The BBC took down a video of released prisoner Sara Al Suwaisa due to an incorrect translation that falsely claim she expressed gratitude to Hamas. You can see they say there was an error in the "editing process" #Palestine
Image 2) This translation shown by @RespondCrisis shows a difference in what was said and what was translated. It is a huge difference that points to a really serious "mistranslation" Image
Nov 23 13 tweets 4 min read
#Gaza. This is interesting. An edited video of an Israeli soldier going into what she claims is a Hamas tunnel near Al Shifa. What's interesting is she mentions Qatar 3 times, and specifically that the tunnel goes under the 'Qatari Compound'. This could be an attempt to either legitimise the Israeli attacks on Qatar's reconstruction HQ, or perhaps more likely, to try and delegitimise Qatar in the eyes of the international community. Qatar are key in mediating the release of hostages but some in Israel wish to discredit Qatar as the mediator, preferring
Nov 3 10 tweets 4 min read
🚨🧵1/ A few people have asked me about this video, and this account, @Amjadt25. Amjad Taha is a known disinfluencer (someone who routinely spreads disinformation). I will post some examples #GazaGenocide #disinformation Image 2/ Before the Qatar World cup, he was responsible for a viral and false story that claimed Qatar bribed Ecuador to lose their opening game. and pomeps.org/the-bot-iful-g…

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Oct 30 7 tweets 5 min read
🧵There is no evidence that Shani Louk was beheaded and her entire skull found. However, numerous outlets like @BILD and @newsweek have gone with headlines like, 'These animals chopped off her head', but this is a direct quote from Israel's president @Isaac_Herzog #GazaWar
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2/ who is basing his statement off his recollection of German media reporting - either he is making an assumption or deliberate misrepresentation. His comments about beheading come after he discusses referring to German 'news reels'. Watch his interview

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Oct 25 10 tweets 4 min read
🧵1/ This tweet from the IDF claims Hamas are hoarding 500,000 litres of fuel. There is no reason for anyone to believe this is true, but let's just assume it is! How much fuel is 500,000 litres? Sounds like a lot, but it's not enough to power #Gaza for 6 hours... #Gazabombing Image 2/ The Gaza Strip needs approx 550MW of electricity, but even before the war only 250MW was available, representing a 55% shortage. Power cuts are part of daily life. Only 44% of this 250MW comes from Gaza's Power Plant, 8% is from Egypt, & 48% from Israeli Electric Company Image
Oct 23 8 tweets 4 min read
🧵1/ The IDF repeatedly try to justify mass killing of Palestinian civilians by saying that Hamas infrastructure is often near a mosque, school or hospital.

But if we do the math, everywhere in Gaza is close to a mosque, school or clinic 👉
#Gazabombing #GazaUnderAttack
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2/ According to the Palestine Bureau of Statistics, there are 1230 mosques, 158 primary care clinics, and 429 schools in the #Gaza Strip. That's 1817 in total. Gaza is 360 km2, but the livable/buildable area is much smaller. Why? pcbs.gov.ps/Portals/_Rainb…


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Oct 19 7 tweets 3 min read
🧵People often talk about Israel's #disinformation "playbook". A good place to start is Benoit's 'image restoration theory'. These are 5 stages of comms strategies designed to try & protect the reputation of an entity committing an act that generates negative PR #GazaHospital Image Stage 1 is where Israel lives - Denial. Say it didn't happen and ideally, blame someone, usually either Palestinians, Hamas, or "terrorists". As we saw from all the fake videos in the wake of the Ahli bombing - provide false evidence to quickly muddy waters (fog of war) Image
Oct 11 11 tweets 4 min read
🧵So far on X the unconfirmed report about 40 murdered babies have at least 44 million impressions, 300k likes, over 100k reposts (retweets). The key propagators of the story were @i24NEWS_EN and @Israel, the story was based on a report by @Nicole_Zedek Image The original report never claimed 40 babies were decapitated. Zedek reported that soldiers told her that up to '40 babies/children' were killed and '40 babies were taken out on gurneys'. She also stated on X that some babies heads had been cut off. However, those reports, which
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Oct 7 6 tweets 2 min read
1/ I've seen thousands of ppl sharing this awful video of an injured/deceased woman with very few clothes on, being driven away on a truck. Some are saying it's 'fake' or 'old'. The context is not entirely clear but analysis does indicate it's in Gaza. See thread for geolocation Image A clip of the video shows that it's outside AlShafooh Bakery (photo on left). It has a distinctive red/orange structure. You can see images of Al Shafooh bakery online (see photo on right). Note the distinctive red/orange frame.
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Sep 17 9 tweets 3 min read
🧵After noticing many comments doubting the accusations against #RussellBrand, it made me wonder about soc media algorithms & misogyny. So I did an experiment. What I found was pretty disturbing ≈ 70% of highest ranked comments seemed suspicious about accusations against Brand Image 2/ I used Crowdtangle to download all the Facebook posts from verified news organisations reporting the #RussellBrand story. I then sorted them by the number of comments. I analysed the top 5 'most relevant' comments on the 25 most commented on posts. Image
Aug 28 14 tweets 6 min read
1) So @MuhammedKambal and @khalidalbaih raised concerns about a piece of sketchy news being shared by pro-RSF accounts in #Sudan. The news claims to be from a site called @EuroPostAgency The site is clearly part of a #disinformation network. I will highlight some things here > Image 2) Firstly, the news being shared indicates that the Sudanese army had some meeting with Boko Haram, considered by many states to be a terrorist organisation. A fairly obvious attempt to smear by association. Fits with pro-RSF propaganda Image
Jul 10 14 tweets 5 min read
🧵Thread 1/ The many faces of #disinformation on Medium. I wanted to do a thread to show how disinformation fake accounts on Medium follow a remarkably similar pattern to Twitter. Also bonus content on anti-Muslim brotherhood narratives.

Does anyone Remember Samantha Ali? 2/ Of course you might!

Samantha Ali was the face of a recent campaign to spread climate-related propaganda around the UAE hosting Cop28.

Only then she wasn't Samantha Ali, she was Rebecca Klein. She changed profile pictures and bio after the expose. But she's still verified!
Jun 9 11 tweets 6 min read
🧵1/ Ready for a sockpuppet odyssey that goes from Twitter to Medium? Meet Rebecca Klein. She's an 'Israel' based in Dubai, has a fantastic set of chompers, & a verified account. She also loves the UAE, and by the looks of things, spaghetti junctions. #deception #disinformation Image 2/ Klein was part of a network promoting Cop28 in UAE. Following my thread, the network took evasive action, changing their usernames (this is called handle switching). As you can see, Klein became Samantha Ali.

Also, 'Forgetting Rebecca Klein' is a great movie title. Image
Jun 2 16 tweets 10 min read
🧵1/There is a large, multilingual astroturfing effort around #Cop28 on Twitter right now involving at least 100 fake accounts. The accounts in question are promoting UAE foreign policy, bashing UAE's enemies, and burnishing the UAE's environmental record #deception #greenwashing Image 2/ Many use stolen photos - either stock photos or those found on the web. They have fully fleshed out bios, including location (usually somewhere in the UAE). Another common tactic is to tag real accounts like @amnesty in the bio to give an air of credibility and plausibility. ImageImageImageImage
May 11 12 tweets 5 min read
🧵Thread 1/ Does a reply on Twitter from @elonmusk help amplify misleading information? While common sense tells us yes, facts & figures are helpful!

In this thread, I explore to what extent Musk's endorsement of a misleading and racist tweet from @EndWokeness helped amplify it Image 2/ As many of you know, Musk replied to the below tweet showing a misleading and partial interpretation of violent incident statistics in the US.

The original tweet by @EndWokeness was sent on May 5th at 19:14 Coordinated Univeral Time UTC). Musk replied on 6 May at 06.57 UTC Image
May 10 18 tweets 7 min read
Thread 1) @elonmusk is promoting racist misinformation in the wake of the #allentx shootings. There are a number of examples but I want to focus on this graph, which has been shared and liked hundreds of thousands of times. What's the story behind it, and why is it misleading? Image 2/ The graph is shared by an account called 'end wokeness' (agenda much), and the message is quite clear. 'Black-on-white violence is the biggest form of interracial violence but media focuses more on white-on-black violence'. First, where's the data from? Image
Mar 31 6 tweets 1 min read
A.I., Brain Scans and Cameras: The Spread of Police Surveillance Tech nyti.ms/42UpHXy A lack of transparency and oversight for the way surveillance technologies are used opens up the potential for abuse, said Marc O. Jones, author of the book “Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East” and a professor at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar.
Mar 30 10 tweets 4 min read
🧵 1/ This is what 286,000 tweets, retweets and replies calling Joe Biden a 'pedophile' look like. This is just the past 8 months too. 2/ The claim, which dates back to at least 2020, and which was previously debunked, is not going away. This graph shows that there are thousands of tweets per month about Biden being a pedo. At least once a month, one of these goes viral, getting thousands of RTs
Mar 28 5 tweets 2 min read
1) Hateful misleading information does require a certain amount of ignorance and/or malice. Take this "meme", it singles out 4 mass shooters who identified as non binary or trans. It OMITS the fact 2831 mass shootings occurred since 2018 when these four shootings occurred Image 2) Four out of 2831 is around 0.1%. Meanwhile, 98% of shootings are carried out by men, a fact which is not mentioned here. Shootings have increased since 2019. One expert interviewed by the BBC even suggested "toxic masculinity" might be one among several variables responsible Image
Mar 27 12 tweets 2 min read
Fascinating, the UAE paid a Swiss-private investigator (and smear campaigner) to dig up 'dirt' on the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe. What resulted was a colossal campaign in which this mercenary essentially monetised smearing anyone who was within

newyorker.com/magazine/2023/… earshot of someone close to the Muslim brotherhood. One American lost his business as a result. The piece reveals a number of other things.

1) Reputational damage and manipulating Wikipedia has real world consequences
2) The industry of paid-for-writers who write hit pieces is
Mar 8 6 tweets 4 min read
1/5 Since Musk's official take over of Twitter, a very antisemitic, racist and white victimhood/supremacist hashtag has been consistently visible. Around 40,000 tweets from approx 16,000 unique accounts have been involved on the hashtag that spreads conspiracy theories, Image 2/5 From vile antisemitic caricatures and stereotypes to thinly veiled holocaust denial, the hashtag is promoting the idea of a global Jewish cabal controlling the world - including creating Covid19. ImageImageImageImage