Bahrain Mirror: Twitter suspended 1800 sectarian bot accounts after Marc Owen Jones, a researcher at Amnesty International, and a Bahrain Watch colleague contacted them with the results of an investigation conducted June 21, 2016 that showed that the de-nationalisation of Isa Qasim prompted lots of activity from suspicious looking Twitter accounts that were all Tweeting the same thing, essentially justifying the move against Qassim.

"These accounts, which have been active since 2013, have tweeted thousands (probably millions) of Tweets containing anti-Shia and anti-Iranian content over the course of their existence. This, naturally, suggests a government, institution, individuals, or group of individuals, are using marketing techniques to promote sectarianism," said Jones.

He further stressed that despite suspending a large number of Twitter accounts, hashtag Bahrain almost continued in the same rhythm. Statistics showed more than 10,000 tweets of this kind during 12 hours only (on June 22, 2016).

This, in turn, implies they are using software to distort the information scape by generating sectarian, anti-Shia, and anti-Iranian propaganda

Jones also noted that it seems fairly clear that large numbers of bot accounts "are still polluting the #Bahrain hashtag with sectarian content. They are also polluting other hashtags, so long as they relate to Iranian expansionism or Shia subversion," adding that "this sectarian content, which amounts to hate speech, has amounted to approximately 51% of the Tweets on Bahrain hashtag today."

Not only does this damage the utility of Twitter, but it's impact on regional tensions could also be hugely problematic. It's hard to know the causal implications of this. So it's not only Twitter who need to take note, but also policy makers who worry about Daesh, or the general escalation of conflict in the region, he said.

Jones explained in a report he had already published that "automatic account (that he referred to) are trying justify the Bahraini regime's move against Sheikh Kassim Qassim, adding that there are "accounts that  can not only contribute to sectarianism, but create the impression that policies, such as the de-nationalisation of Isa Qasim, have widespread popular support."

How do these accounts operate?

According to Jones, although the big data only goes back a week, most of the Tweets bunch around the same thing. They condemn "terrorist" acts in Saudi's mostly Shia Eastern province, and acts by the "Shia" opposition in Bahrain. Jones indicated that he used the term "Shia" here because it is mentioned frequently, as are derogatory terms, such as Rawafid. This Tweet, for example "strong response from Saudi poet against the "Rawafid" (a video was Attached of the video). He added that often times, Iran is invoked, or the concept of fitna (discord).

The relevant thing is that hundreds of what seem to be automated Twitter accounts are repeating propaganda that conflates acts of violence, terrorism, and unrest, with both Arab Shia and Iran. This strongly suggests that institutions, people, or agencies are deliberately creating divisive, anti-Shia sectarian propaganda and disseminating it in a robotic, but voluminous fashion.

It is also interesting to note that among the many hashtags used by these accounts are Da'ish, the derogatory term used to describe the Islamic State. It could be that they wish to tap into that wider audience, in the hope that the message gets out

Although the bots cycle a number of different tweets, I wanted to examine some more accounts further. I settled on the Tweet "Persians and the Majus... hate the Arabs", "The Iranian regime are the leaders in war and the manufacturing of terrorism and crises", "Iran's Mullah's politicise the Hajj (pilgrimage) with slogans outside Islam and the Sunna of the Prophet", "Sowsan Sha'ir: Bahrain will not listen to the threats of Qasim Suleimani, or others like him" and #withdrawalofnationalityfromIsaQasim #Bahrain #Al-Fakih #Al-Qaed.

"Of course we know  PR and reputation management companies offer such services, yet their work is often done secretly and behind close doors. Would be interesting to find out who is behind this," Jones further stated.

How did Marc Owen Jones discover the automated accounts?

Jones indicated that there are numerous accounts all tweeting at similar times, the exact same text, without a suggestion of a retweet, highlighting that these all appeared after I searched for "Isa Qasim" on Twitter in both Arabic and English languages.

He gathered some information from Twitter and he got 628 tweets when he searched for "Qasim" these, 219 were the exact same Tweet. That is, tweets with the text "Isa Qasim, the #Shiite #terrorist, telling followers to annihilate #Bahrain's Security Forces"

Every one of those Tweets, with the exception of the first, was launched from Tweet Deck - a program favoured by marketeers that allows one to manage multiple accounts from a single machine. All the accounts have a similar, low number of followers and people they follow. Accounts created on the same day tend to have a similar number of tweets. E.g. those accounts created on 2nd February 2014 all have about 400 Tweets to their name

He further stated that when you copy one of the Arabic Tweets, and paste it into Twitter's search facility, you get the Top Tweet, which in this case is the person who usually first Tweets it, indicating that "what almost always happens is that the first person to Tweet the information was also one of the suspicious accounts. In particular, a lot of the recent tweets seem to originate with those suspicious accounts that were set up in 2016."

"We can still go to the individual accounts and look at their content for an insight into their most recent concerns, which will logically reflect the ideology of whoever is behind them. Since all these accounts appear to copy from a Master Tweet, they are all essentially Tweeting the exact same Tweets," he added.

Marc Owen Jones stressed that "the homogeneity again adds credence that they are bots with a specific, collective agenda."

Arabic Version