Category: Disinformation

Bahrain, Digital Authoritarianism, Disinformation, Khashoggi, Social Media, Surveillance

September 4, 2022

New Book: Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East

I am very excited to announce the publication of my new book, Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media – published by Hurst & Co. in the UK and Oxford University Press in the United States. Description You are being lied to by people who don’t even exist. Digital deception is…
Disinformation, Khashoggi, Social Media

October 8, 2020

Khashoggi, AJ+, Saudi Trolls

It’s been a busy few weeks, and I have witten a number of Op-eds on a number of topics. Please find them listed below. US ruling on AJ+ projects Emirati power into the heart of American justicehttps://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2020/9/18/aj-ruling-projects-emirati-power-into-us-justice-system Thought Russia was bad? Why Saudi Arabia is the world’s most dangerous cyber bullyhttps://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2020/9/15/saudi-arabia-is-the-worlds-most-dangerous-cyber-bully Jamal Khashoggi’s legacy: A…
Disinformation

March 21, 2020

Busted! Journalist Liliane Khalil Exposed

*This is a piece from 2011, posted here for posterity, and because it was on my old blog***** If it’s 2 am, and you’re still awake screaming angrily at your Twitter feed, then chances are you’ve been sucked into the Arab Spring – online edition. Indeed, social media and the Arab Spring are two collocations…
Disinformation, Social Media, Surveillance

February 25, 2020

All 84 or so of my disinformation Twitter threads in one table!

A table of all my disinfo twitter threads
Disinformation, Social Media

February 20, 2020

New Column in the Middle East Eye

I have contributed three columns to the Middle East Eye in the past month or so. Two of those concern disinformation on Twitter, the other a discourse analysis of Kushner’s conflict plan. How IS uses hacked accounts to flood Twitter with propaganda Jared Kushner: The colonial mindset behind his so-called ‘peace plan’ Saudi Arabia’s bot…
Disinformation, Social Media, Surveillance, Uncategorized

March 19, 2019

The Gulf Information War| Propaganda, Fake News, and Fake Trends: The Weaponization of Twitter Bots in the Gulf Crisis

I am pleased to announce that I have published a new article in the International Journal of Communication. It’s open access and you can find it here. It is part of a special issue called The Gulf Information War and the Role of Media and Communication Technologies, edited by the great Banu Akdenizli and Ilhem…
Disinformation, Social Media

February 18, 2019

Twitter accounts hijacked to tweet anti-Qatar propaganda and challenge French Embassy’s demands to issue Raif Badawi an amnesty

In the spirit of trying be more regular with this blog (Think of it as a high fibre writing diet), I am writing another post in my traditional style; burying the lede and ending lots of sentences with prepositions such as ‘as’. My last post featured an interesting story about how verified Twitter accounts were…
Disinformation

February 10, 2019

Was the person behind the Twitter account of dead American meteorologist a living Saudi prince?

Yesterday I wrote how pro-regime Saudi entities were using hijacked verified Twitter accounts. Today Twitter removed the verification of two of those accounts. One of them, belonging to the late meteorologist David Schwartz, is still verified. This is perhaps the most interesting. The fact is that David passed away two years ago. The New York…
Disinformation, Uncategorized

February 9, 2019

Someone in Saudi has taken over the verified Twitter account of a dead American meteorologist – and there’s more…

The hacked accounts of verified users on Twitter are likely being bought and sold to unknown Saudi entities and Twitter appear to be doing little about it. This post details a number of examples of this problem, putting it in the wider context of the problematic Gulf Twittersphere. **Update: Since I wrote this blog and it…