The Networked Trolling of Critical Journalists and News Organizations in Iraq
Abstract
:1. Introduction
- RQ: What are the disinformation campaigns’ major themes and techniques used by militia groups in Iraq against journalists, news organizations, and activists?
2. Method
3. Results and Discussion
- 1.
- Theme 1—Public shaming and personal attacks: The bad actors we identified on Twitter focused their attention on attacking the Iraqi journalist, Ahmed Al-Bashir, for the two top hashtags are #Al Bashir_Camel (n = 7990) and #Al-Bashir_is_ISIS_mouthpiece (n = 4634). Al-Bashir, @ahmedalbasheer1, is also the third most mentioned user on Twitter (n = 249), and the association made between Al Bashir and ISIS is meant to discredit the journalist and belittle his critical positions towards the militias (Figure 2). The second most trolled journalist is Steven Nabil (@thestevennabil), who is a US-based Iraqi journalist and human rights activist. Similar to Al-Bashir, we find that he is called Steven dung (ستيفن_بعرورة#) which was mentioned 818 times closely followed by Steven is the Embassy’s dog (n = 245; ستيفن_كلب_السفارة#) to allegedly claim that Steven is a Saddam Hussein follower or Baathist as well as a foreign agent working with Al Bashir for the US Embassy in harming Iraq’s interests. The third journalist who is targeted is Saad Al Bazaz, the manager of the channel is another target, and the fourth is Sarmad Al Tae, often showing him as a devil who intends to bring chaos to the country because he once criticized the Iranian-backed militias and their crimes on the official TV channel, Al Iraqiya. Currently, the Iraqi Supreme court has filed a legal case against Al Tae for his criticism (Salim 2022), denoting the pervasive influence of these militias in the Iraqi state (Figure 3). Al Taei is often portrayed online as a joker, a pejorative term taken from the 2019 Joker movie that is used to demean activists and journalists showing them as foreign agents and puppets seeking chaos (Mustafa 2022). In early December 2022, a well-known Iraqi activist was imprisoned for merely insulting one of these militias on social media (BBC News 2022), clearly showing the influential outreach of these militant groups on Iraq’s judiciary.
- 2.
- Theme 2—Legal threats and misinformation accusations: Another major theme that is identified is related to directing legal threats against journalists and news organizations as well as accusing them of spreading misinformation by fact checking some news items. In this respect, the most targeted news channel happens to be the UK-based Al Sharqiya channel due to its secular orientation, favorable news coverage on the 2019 Iraqi protests, and critical position towards the militias and the government (Figure 5). The channel is often accused of spreading pro-Sunni and/or Baathist propaganda; the third and fifth most referenced hashtags are #Expel_Al-Shariqiya (n = 1314) and #Basrah_expels_Al-Shariqiya (n = 2118), respectively. The second news organization that is targeted is the Saudi-run regional channel, MBC. One of the popular hashtags, for example, is #MBC_is_the_Saudi_terrorism_channel (#ام_بي_سي_قناة_الارهاب_السعودي) (n = 907) followed by another slight modification of the same hashtag (n = 174). The fourth most frequent hashtag is #The_judiciary_deters_the agents (n = 1441), which is used for all the targeted journalists and news organizations. In this respect, the phrases “spreading rumors” (بث الشائعات), “distorting the image of the society” (تشويه صورة مجتمعات), and “tool for misinformation and lies” (أداة للكذب والتدليس) all occurred 162 times.
- 3.
- Theme 3—Glorifying Shiite heroism and promoting conspiracies: The third major theme that is recurrent in the datasets is related to highlighting the role of the Shiite militias in the region and promoting some related falsehood.1 The latter hashtag is a reference to Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis who, together with the Iranian military commander, Qassim Soleimani, was killed by US forces in Iraq in 2020. Many tweets promise retaliation against US forces and/or express direct threats against US interests by showing the different drones and weaponry that these militias control. The messages also emphasize that the Shiite militias are allegedly still in the political resistance phase and that the struggle is continuous despite their major role and influence in Iraq.
4. Conclusions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
1 | For example, the hashtag #Hashid_Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces (الحشد_الشعبي#), which refers to the Shiite militias tasked with fighting ISIS, was mentioned 157 times, followed by #Hashid_anniversary (عيد_الحشد#) (n = 127), the unified_Shiite_House (البيت_الشيعي_واحد#) (n = 94), we_liberated_Western_Iraq (احنه_الحررنا_الغربيه#) (n = 98), and the #Muhandis_the_founder (المهندس_الموسس#) (n = 81). |
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Al-Rawi, A.; Tenove, C.; Klein, P. The Networked Trolling of Critical Journalists and News Organizations in Iraq. Journal. Media 2023, 4, 1130-1140. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia4040072
Al-Rawi A, Tenove C, Klein P. The Networked Trolling of Critical Journalists and News Organizations in Iraq. Journalism and Media. 2023; 4(4):1130-1140. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia4040072
Chicago/Turabian StyleAl-Rawi, Ahmed, Chris Tenove, and Peter Klein. 2023. "The Networked Trolling of Critical Journalists and News Organizations in Iraq" Journalism and Media 4, no. 4: 1130-1140. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia4040072