Category: Social Media
-
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…
-
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…
-
All 84 or so of my disinformation Twitter threads in one table!
A table of all my disinfo twitter threads
-
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…
-
Podcast on sectarianism and growing up in #Bahrain with @ProjectSEPAD
I am excited to post a podcast conducted by Dr. Simon Mabon at Lancaster University. The podcast is part of Projeact SEPAD, or the Sectarianism, Proxies and De-sectarianisation initiative, a Carnegie Corporation-funded project at @RichardsonInst based at Lancaster University. In it I tlak about growing up in Bahrain, and how it influenced my academic perspective…
-
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…
-
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…
-
In Graphs: How pro-Saudi Twitter Bots Boost Donald Trump’s Ego (and his retweet count)
We know Donald Trump likes to tweet. Given his waning popularity, he probably needs those social media dopamine hits more than most of us. However, while Donald Trump’s actual popularity among living humans remains the stuff of intrigue, especially with accusations of various forms of electoral manipulation by Cambridge Analytica, the Russians, and bots, his…
-
A Personal History of Trolling
Bahrain in 2011, a wretched hive of scum and villainy. J/k, but it’s always fun to use a Star Wars quote. Am I right?Anyway, was going through some old notes and found multiple instances of all the trolling, harassment, or cyberbullying I faced over the past few years. This is very ‘normal’ if you’re critical…
-
The PR Octopus & Its Incredibly Long Tentacles
3 weeks ago, a British PR and Strategic Communication firm called Dragon Associates forced the Guardian to take down an article from their Comment is Free section. Today the Guardian have put it back up. The article in question stated that the head of security at the BIC (Bahrain International Circuit) had been involved in…
Marc Owen Jones 