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Mecca – Mecca
While Iran is waging a war against Saudi Arabia through its enemies in the Houthi militias, its digital cold war has intensified in the past, according to a recent study by Oxford University scholars , the oldest in the world.
Investigators Philip Haurad, Vidya Narayana and Mona Swah said 1.2 million Iranian tweets were targeting the kingdom and 770 Twitter accounts canceled in October 2018 were among the biggest hackers of social networking sites.
"The intervention of the mullahs in the Arab States has become more evident since the 2011 Arab Spring protests, and they have tried to extend their influence in the region in an unprecedented manner," he said. he declared. "In October 2018, 770 Twitter accounts were hacked by Iranian pirates.
The research, titled "Iranian Digital Intervention in the Arab World", focused on Arabic-language tweets from 770 Iran-related accounts.
Digital War
Although Iran constantly ingests in Arab politics, whether militarily or by supporting non-state actors, it seems that digital warfare is a modern strategy adopted by Iran to exert a influence on the Arab world. In turn, this study aims to determine whether there is significant evidence of Iranian digital interference targeting Arabs.
In October 2018, Twitter released two datasets, including 3,841 IRA accounts and 770 accounts impacting Iran, that Twitter stopped in August 2018 due to its involvement in the coordinated manipulation of the platform. Twitter believes that Iran-related news operations have Tehran's potential support.
What does Iran want?
The research indicates that Iran's intervention in Arab countries' policies is more evident since the 2011 Arab Spring protests. Iran seeks to expand its influence in the region on its political rival against Saudi Arabia in particular, often Cold War, which has not been definitively declared, but has used proxy wars in Syria and Yemen.
Iran has regularly adopted political positions against Saudi Arabia on issues affecting the region. The Arab Spring protests surprised the Iranian government, which then backed the protests in Bahrain, with a Shia majority, and the escalation of the conflict in Syria, including indirect military clashes.
For its part, Syria has long been considered an ally of Iran, as it stood in its place during the Iran-Iraq war that took place between 1980 and 1988. In turn, Iran has supported the Assad regime since the protests of the Arab Spring in 2011. The war in Yemen provided another example of Iran's support for Huthi militias.
Promoting Shiite Ideas
Iran has a strong media presence in the Arab world since the launch of satellite channels, Al-Alam news channel aired 24 hours a day in Arabic since Tehran, founded in 2003. The news channel has gained in popularity. popularity among Shia Muslims in the Arab world because of the continued coverage of it.In 2006, Iran launched a satellite channel in Arabic language, religiously inspired, called Al Kawthar, intended to promote Shiite ideas among Arabs.
Iranians and Facebook
- In August 2018, Facebook removed 652 pages, a collection and an account on Iran from Facebook and Instagram due to its involvement in a "misguided behavior", targeting people from the Middle East, America Latin America, the United Kingdom and the United States.
- In October 2018, Facebook announced the removal of 82 pages, a collection and an account on Facebook and Instagram. The company announced this time that these accounts and pages were sent to people in the United States and the United Kingdom. Some of these stories have been used as an American citizen who lobbied against Saudi and Israeli stories.
Poison of Iran on Twitter
- In August 2018, Twitter announced the suspension of 770 accounts (analyzed in this study). These accounts have been promoted in letters from the pro-Iranian government and on sites that publish Iranian political stories.
- Fire Eye, a digital security company, has released a report referring to a network of social networking sites and accounts targeting people in the United States, the United Kingdom, Latin America, and the Middle East. The network aims to promote pro-Iranian and Palestinian messages, including messages hostile to Saudi Arabia, Tramb and Israel.
- Other websites related to Iran were discovered in November 2018, as well as 70 information sites showing that they are targeting people from different countries, from Russia to the United States. ; Afghanistan. Despite the growing political tension between Iran and the Arab world, the network targeting the Arab world is still not enough until now.
- The data analyzed by the study is part of the initiative "Electoral Integrity" launched by Twitter to enable search operations information on the Twitter platform.
- The platform has released data on 770 accounts related to the Iranian state. Twitter has not specified whether these accounts are automatic accounts or hand accounts. Iran's data collection includes 1,122,936 extrapolations from these 770 accounts.
- The oldest account was created in April 2009 and the last account in August 2018. When verifying the creation dates, we found that about 40% of accounts were created only in 2017.
- The construction dates culminated between May 2017 and January 2018, coinciding with the May 2017 Iranian presidential election and the January 2018 Iranian protests. This suggests that the calculations were originally created to support the Iranian state.
Attack in 50 languages
The 770 accounts with 862 003 subscribers, and the most followed account (41 489 subscribers) on its page [البايو] That its geographical location is in Saudi Arabia. Of the first 10 accounts, six are Saudis.
About 62% of the accounts have less than 500 subscribers, followed by 805,550 followed and 56% of them follow fewer than 500 accounts. This may indicate that some of these calculations were more effective than others.
Tweets are written in 50 different languages. French is the most used language (29%), followed by English (25%), Arabic (14%) and Iran (8%). Of the 770 accounts, 392 (more than half) declare at least once in Arabic.
Haztaq hostile
His research focused on Arabic-only tweets, which primarily targeted Arab users, with 154,326 tweets in Arabic in the data set and 337,379 likes. Therefore, their participation in Arab users can be considered very limited, which could explain why the low prevalence of Twitter in the Arab world has been considered as an elite platform.
There are over 23,000 different tags associated with Arabic scripts. The most frequently used tags are issues of Iranian interest. Among the most frequently used tags in our data collection, five countries refer to Iran countries of political interest.
The most commonly used label is Saudi Arabia (#SaudiArabia). Anti-Saudi hiccups have appeared in the database, such as a label criticizing the Saudi government, the second most widely used being Yemen # (Yemen), which may also be related to Iranian interests in Yemen. In this # #TheMarch Breaking and #Palestine, in which there were tweets about the transfer of the US Embassy in Jerusalem, which sparked many protests among Palestinians.
Identity theft and counterfeit
Other country-related signs include: # Iraq, #Syria, #Libyaalmokhtar – In reference to Omar al-Mukhtar, leader of the Libyan resistance against the former Italian colony, this sign was used to designate Web Site (Libyaalmokhtar. com). In general, Arab labels referred to countries and subjects trying to change Iran.
The identity of the media is one of the main tools used by the Iranian accounts to intervene in the Arab world. Nine of the top 10 most effective accounts in publishing tweets in Arabic feature the features of Arab news platforms, portraying themselves as news platforms belonging to different Arab countries. These accounts have republished their tweets and shared links to the same sites.
For example, the most active account (@alsaudianet) published 4,870 tweets from the second most active account, @alsaudiatimes. These stories promoted stories and writings criticizing Saudi Arabia's internal and external policies, including the war in Yemen.
The page (No2al.Saud) was shared 1130 times in the tweets contained in the database and the page in audio format was shared 1794 times. Using the new feature of Facebook, which determines the location of page administrators, we found that those who manage both pages on the Facebook platform are responsible in Iran. The number of followers of the page (No2al.saud) on the site "Facebook" to more than 250,000 users. Both pages are currently inactive.
They call for women's support
Similarly, the @harkatweet account publishes stories and writings hostile to Saudi Arabia, linked to an active website called Hourriya-tagheer.net. The @alwaienewsnet account has published information from Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Syria, while the alhadathps account @ promotes pro-Palestinian publications.
Another account – Twitter has not revealed its identity – is a specialized information platform on the Syrian issue. This account publishes pro-government tweets. On this account, the links almahawer.com with 13.4% of Arab tweets published were shared and this site promotes the news pro-Assad. The seventh most active account – @freesaudiawomen – does not present itself as a platform of information, but claims to support the freedom of Saudi women. This account republishes many tweets from the account (@alsaudiatimes), requiring that 51% of the tweets in Arabic published on this account are republished publications from the account @alsaudiatimes.
Stories made
The eqlimolsharq @ twitter account supported a fabricated and counterproductive account of Saudi Arabia, attacked the Saudi account @ toons_online and re-posted tweets from @freesaudiawomen and calculated alsaudiatimes (@) several times. We found a page on the Facebook platform linked to @ toons_online. This page is published in English and focuses on promoting anti-spam information.
In addition, the @ iuvm_arabic account is defined as part of the IUVM. About 34.7% of account tweets include links to iuvmpress.com. This site is part of the IUI (International Virtual Information Union) organization, which manages several sites.
In general, these stories use modern classical Arabic in their tweets and do not reveal their Iranian origins in the profiles and geographical references of their stories. Modern Arabic is the official language used in books, newspapers, official letters and communications. In contrast, Twitter users tend to use a less formal Arabic on social media. The accounts in the dataset may therefore aim to share news and links to sites instead of trying to chat with other users or attempting to pretend to be misleading. Arabic users using certain dialects.
Promote the mullahs' policy
Of all the links that have been shared, 69% are sites that promote Iranian political messages to the mullahs, which may support the idea that Iran's calculations are aimed primarily at disseminating information that supports the Iranian narrative. Of the 154,326 tweets in Arabic, 79,623 links were shared from 396 websites. About 84% (67,032) of the links were for only 10 websites. About 15% (11,842) of links were directed to Facebook, which is more popular among Arabs than Twitter. This may indicate that similar processes are also occurring on the Facebook site.
The site (alhadathps.com) has been shared 9,591 times and is linked to the account (@alhadathps). Therefore, we can conclude that this site can also be Iranian. This site is dedicated to Palestinian news and has not been active since November 2018. The Facebook page associated with this website has 9,000 subscribers. We believe that this site has been named alhadathps to simulate another Saudi site under the name alhadath.net. Similarly, alwaienews.net is linked to the @alwaienewsnet account and has not been updated since October 2018. Jordantimes.com, which was active during the analysis period, has been updated for the last time in October 2018. This is a Jordan based site. In addition, Hourriya-tagheer.org is linked to a @harakatweet account and a Facebook page under hourriyah.official. The site encourages criticism against Saudi Arabia.
Messages supporting Assad
Similarly, the Arabic version of iuvmpress.com was shared 7,225 times in tweets in Arabic. The site is part of IUVM, which operates several websites. Iuvm.org includes nine languages, including Persian. A previous report linked this organization to Tehran. The site is managed by four other services, including IUVM TV and IUVM Press. The Arabic version of the IUVM Press promotes letters from the Iranian government, including new pro-Assad and anti-Saudi.
Al-saudia.net is not currently active, but is linked to the @alsaudianet account, as well as to an account on the Instagram site with the same name. This reflects the fact that Iranian interference could also apply to other platforms. Similarly, libyaalmokhtar.com, which focuses on news from Libya, is linked to a Twitter account, a Facebook page and an account on the Insthram website. Alkawthart.com is the AlKawthar TV channel established in 2006. This channel is known for its affiliation with Iran and its targeting of the Arab public. Syriaalhadath.com focuses on Syria and promotes the pro-Assad narrative.
Persian umbrella
After that, the search focused on the most popular websites shared in Arabic tweets. Where he started locating the IP addresses of websites, and with the exception of Facebook, all websites use web hosting services from companies such as Cloud Flair, Hitzner, Neem Chip or VH . Thus, the IP address was not directed to the actual sites of the websites. Later, the search used the website (whois.icann.org), a service provided by ICAN (Internet Company for Names and Assigned Numbers), to obtain domain holder data and revealed that a mail electronic had been used. One to register a link (alwaienews.net) and a link (syriaalhadath.com).
The researchers found that this email was registered with an incorrect address. These sites are registered by an organization called Arab Domain Provider. With the help of the WHOIS database, it was found that the organization had also registered the website (niletonline.com) previously identified as having Iranian origins. He could not find any other information on the Arab organization of domain names. The above sites were also created in 2012.
She also found that a second set of websites in the dataset shared a single registered email: iuvmpress.com, iuvmnews.com, and ar.islamic-sources.com. Iuvmpress.com and iuvmnews.com are both registered under the umbrella of an organization: the Persian domain provider.
False addresses
The researchers noted that the website (alkawthartv.com) is registered by an organization called SazmanHost. Alkawthartv.com has been funded by Iran since the launch of the TV channel in 2006. The website (libyaalmokhtar.com) is registered using fake registration information, including a fake address. The address used for the registration of the website is Tripoli, Tripoli, 1234567890 Libya. The organization, which the site claims to be registered under its name, is calling Libya.
In addition, the website (hourriya-tagheer.org) is linked to the Tiger Arts Organization, claiming to be in Iraq. However, Jordan-times.com and al-saudia.net use a service that protects their information, so we could not find more details about them. In general, the Iranian influence campaigns targeting Arabs may have started with the creation of news sites and their dissemination to social media. In addition, the erroneous recording of information prevented us from knowing the sources of these sites.
What do the deceptive tweets of Iran contain?
- (1) Arabic is the third most frequently used language in Iranian data collection.
- (2) Arabic tweets were not meant to socialize with other Arab users, but to promote specific news sites and over 69% of links to news sites. pro-Iranian in Arabic language.
- (3) The most popular websites included in the Arab tweets feature an Iranian political speech, including reviews from Saudi Arabia and support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
- (4) If an Arabic user interacts with Twitter accounts, Facebook pages or websites, it will be difficult to discover Iranian sources for these sites. Unfortunately, most websites are registered with fake contact information, making tracking the sources of the site very difficult or impossible.
- (5) It is clear that the intervention network includes various platforms and websites for Arabs. In our future work, we will perform other analyzes, including new datasets published by Twitter.
Detect political manipulation
The research dates back to academics at the Oxford Internet Institute of COMPROP, a multidisciplinary team of experts in information and social networking that study how political parties manipulate public opinion. public through social networks.
This work involves analyzing the interaction of algorithms, automation, politics and social media in order to amplify or restrict political content, misinformation, hate speech and irrelevant information. . The data notes are designed to provide fast profiles of current event analysis with a short design.
Although they reflect methodological experience and constitute an analysis, they have not been peer reviewed. The working papers provide further analysis and many arguments that have been considered collectively and dealt with general issues. The articles and chapters of the computer program books and books are important manuscripts that have been peer-reviewed and officially published.
Questions asked by the research
The research analyzed Arabic tweets published by the 770 suspended accounts in order to explore the patterns and messages promoted by Twitter users of Arabs.
How big is the existing Arabic content compared to the content of other languages?
What types of content have the Iranian accounts published in Arabic?
What is the extent of Iranian numerical interference in the Arab world?
Arabs and networking sites
415 million Arabs live in 22 countries of the Arab world.
44% of Arabs have access to the Internet.
34% of Arabs use Facebook, even in countries with unstable political environments such as Syria.
Top 10 users discuss in Arabic
Total: 94.158
alsaudianet 13 812 Saudi Arabia
alsaudiatimes 11,766 Saudi Arabia
harakatweet 11,466 Saudi Arabia
alwaienewsnet 11,241 Unidentified
alhadathps 10,672 Palestine
Hashed Name 9,296 Syria
freesaudiawomen 8,984 Saudi Arabia
eqlimolsharq 6,296 Saudi Arabia
toons_online 5,344 Unidentified
iuvm_arabic 5,281 Saudi Arabia
المصدر: تقديرات المؤلفين بناء على البيانات المقدمة من تويتر
ملاحظة: جزأ تويتر الحسابات التي تحظى بأقل من 5000 متابع في مجموعة هذه البيانات لتجنب النتائج الإيجابية الخاطئة
المواقع الالكترونية الأكثر مشاركة
facebook.com
11,842
15.0%
alhadathps.com
9.591
12.0%
alwaienews.net
9.038
11.0%
hourriya-tagheer.org
8,873
11.0%
jordan-times.com
8.764
11.0%
iuvmpress.com
7,225
9.0%
al-saudia.net
4,291
6.0%
libyaalmokhtar.com
3,184
4.0%
alkawthartv.com
2,677
3.0%
syriaalhadath.com
1,547
2.0%
غير ذلك
12.591
16.0%
المجموع 79,623
Source: تقديرات المؤلفين بناء على البيانات المقدمة من تويتر
ملاحظة: al-saudia.net, syriaalhadath.com, and jordantimes.com تعد مواقع الكترونية غير نشطة في الوقت الحالي.
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