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The fake account is part of a network promoting Russian president Vladimir Putin on Twitter, which used the hashtags #IStandWithPutin and #IStandWithRussia on 2 and 3 March. This led to trending topics in different regions - particularly in the global south, apparently showing support for the war, in countries including India, Pakistan, South Africa and Nigeria.

many other profiles appear to have been inauthentic. They retweeted messages in high quantities, produced few original messages, and were created very recently. "They were likely produced by bots, fake profiles or compromised accounts, artificially amplifying support for Putin in these countries," says Carl Miller, co-founder of CASM Technology, a company that researches online harms and disinformation.

The accounts tweet a mixture of criticism of Western countries, express solidarity between the so-called Brics countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), and offer direct support to Mr Putin. "We default to the idea that information campaigns will be directed to the West. Yet none of the accounts were addressing the West nor claimed to be from the West," says Mr Miller.

tool in the hands of Arab states

a subversive force was seen in the 1970s, when cassette tapes of preachers denouncing governments for tyranny and corruption spread in Egypt and Iran

Arabic satellite news and entertainment media established by Gulf Arab states

The fledgling TV news channel, under the wing of the state-run Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, is at the forefront of an ambitious effort by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, to shape how the country is viewed around the world. With sleek graphics, English-speaking foreign journalists and funded from the deep pockets of the taxpayer, it follows the blueprint of Qatar’s Al Jazeera and Russia’s RT, formerly Russia Today.

“There has [for many years] been a need for a broadcast channel delivering the events to the world from a different perspective, which presents Turkey’s own viewpoint,” says Ibrahim Eren, head of broadcasting for TRT. Ankara’s growing influence, not least in Syria and the migrant crisis, had created the need for a station showing non-Turkish viewers “how we see the world”

foreign journalists whom he views as an extension of western influence over Turkish internal affairs

Al Jazeera Arabic’s pro-Brotherhood methodology is two-pronged. First, it predominantly hosts guests that it can be fairly certain would be gentle in their criticism of the Muslim Brotherhood, and second, its anchors refrain from asking Muslim Brotherhood members and spokesmen embarrassing questions.

The alliance between Qatar, the host and backer of Al Jazeera, with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is no secret.

Al Jazeera Arabic’s love affair with the Muslim Brotherhood has done damage to more than one country’s revolutionary cause. In Syria, Al Jazeera Arabic’s championing of the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated and highly ineffective opposition Syrian National Council has cost the channel much credibility. Al Jazeera Arabic refrains from criticising the group or highlighting its repeated failures. It also instructs its reporters to follow a certain narrative, prompting numerous resignations. 

Tim Sebastian, journalist and head of the New Arab Debates, announced during a press conference today that the Ministry of the Interior has assured him that they did not direct police officers to gather information about the attendees of the May 29 debate. During the debate, which took place at the Institute of Cultural Heritage in Tunis’s old city, two policemen allegedly asked a Tunisian staff member of the New Arab Debates team for the list of attendees at the event, claiming that they were acting on “orders from superiors.” The New Arab Debates team announced the suspension of their activities in Tunis as a sign of protest against the incident.

“We thought we just acquired freedom of speech. If they’re trying to intimidate us with such acts, we shouldn’t remain silent,”

“What matters the most for us is the reputation of Tunisia. Excuses such as ‘orders from superiors’ are tools of the old regime,”

About half the political prisoners he met in jail told him police had tracked their communications and movements through their cell phones

Stockholm-based Ericsson AB, Creativity Software Ltd. of the U.K. and Dublin-based AdaptiveMobile Security Ltd. marketed or provided gear over the past two years that Iran’s law enforcement or state security agencies would have access to, according to more than 100 documents and interviews with more than two dozen technicians and managers who worked on the systems.

When Iranian security officers needed to locate a target one night in late 2009, one former Ericsson employee says he got an emergency call to come into the office to fix a glitch in an Ericsson positioning center.

Tajikistan’s government has blocked the websites of the British Broadcasting Corporation and Russian TV channel Vesti, local internet providers told RIA Novosti on Monday. “The decision has been taken by the Governmental Communications Service,”

Experts link the move to a controversial armed conflict in the east of the republic that took place on July 24. At least nine Tajik security officers were killed and another 25 others injured in a special operation in Tajikistan’s eastern city of Khorog against a mafia-style group believed to be behind the murder of a top Tajik security general, Abdullo Nazarov. Dushanbe denies any casualties among civilians, but the opposition media reported some 200 dead, including security officers and civilians.

pretext for an ethnic cleansing campaign

The decision to expose Egyptians to the show was the outcome of a protocol signed by the Chinese government and the Egyptian Radio and Television Union (ERTU), a division of Egypt's information ministry, for the express purpose of using mass media to prepare the population for a stronger alliance between the two states. China gave ERTU the rights to the program for free and paid for the translation and overdubbing. Egyptian Information Minister Duraya Sharaf al-Din, toasting the program's premiere during a visit to the Chinese embassy in Cairo, told Chinese radio that her government wants the series to instill an emotional connection with China that will popularize political and economic ties.

The show falls outside the news cycle and offers little entertainment value, but for the narrow purpose of inducing Egyptian and Tunisian youth to enroll in their local Confucius Institutes it strikes precisely the right chords. Young listeners in an unstable country with high unemployment hear that they can study Chinese for free and dramatically boost their job prospects. The show's guests manage to preempt defensive reactions from the kind of nationalistic listeners who would bristle at such an overture from a foreign power: They are assured that Egypt, too, is a great civilization and only lags behind China owing to its history of exploitation by the West. A step toward China is a step toward liberation and progress. Beijing comes across as a refreshingly hospitable destination for study abroad, moreover. Its people honor guests and reject the anti-Arab stereotypes widespread in Europe and the United States.

Who listens to such a broadcast? Unlike America's Radio Sawa or the BBC from London, CRI Arabic isn't available on local radio in the region (with the exception of what appears to be a pilot project on FM radio in the sparsely populated North African republic of Mauritania). Nor does it figure prominently among Arabic stations hyped online. One finds it advertised in venues where Arabs already curious about China are likely to go. For example, the website of the Chinese embassy in Cairo features a link on its home page, while in person the embassy's cultural attaché encourages the young people he meets to tune in. Some Confucius Institute chapters also disseminate links to prospective students as a kind of audio brochure.

The demonstrators on Tuesday did the unthinkable: publicly burning the pictures of Gamal Mubarak, son of the president, who is suspected of being groomed to succeed his father. The issue is so sensitive that security forces rushed to confiscate footage shot by the cameras of Al Jazeera and the BBC. Nevertheless, the news spread like wildfire and some still photographs made their way to cyberspace.

the old tactics of muzzling public opinion may not be as efficient anymore

he difficulty for Khamenei is that the Green Movement opposing his actions also wraps itself in the mantle of Khomeini's Islamic Revolution and will be marching to celebrate that revolution. They just insist that the Islamic Republic's constitution guarantees the right of public protest (correct) and that it exalts the rule of law over the personal whim of a monarch (also correct).

(Iran is notoriously hard to organize, being a set of mostly medium-sized cities separated by vast distances and arid, often craggy terrain; Khomeini used the radio, sending signals through BBC interviews, and audio cassette tapes, which followers played in private or in taxis beyond the hearing of the secret police of Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, the shah.)

I think if anything the Obama administration has indicated to Al Jazeera that it sees us as part of the solution, not part of the problem

"It is downright un-American to still refuse to carry it," wrote Jeff Jarvis on Sunday. "Vital, world-changing news is occurring in the Middle East and no one-not the xenophobic or celebrity-obsessed or cut-to-the-bone American media-can bring the perspective, insight, and on-the-scene reporting Al Jazeera English can."

Al Jazeera is the scourge of authoritarian governments around the Middle East, which attempt to block it. The network, however, covers much more than the Middle East, and now has more bureaus in Latin America than CNN and the BBC, said Burman. "As proud as we are of our Middle Eastern coverage, we are in other places in the world that are never, never seen on television in American homes," he said.

After naming a few prominent valide sultans — the title of the legal mother of the sultan — from the Ottoman era, Erdogan said, “Valide sultans have been pioneers of their generation and examples to our mothers.” Challenging the Orientalist portrayal of the harem as a place where ambitious women battled with the power of their sexuality, Erdogan praised the harem, saying, “For the members of the Ottoman family, the harem was a school. It was a center of education, where women were prepared for life and organized volunteer activities. This household was led by the valide sultans.”

Indeed, despite harsh criticism by AKP elites, series like “Magnificent Century,” about the lives of prominent sultans and their lovers, such as Hurrem or Kosem Sultan, have become extremely popular in Turkey. These shows have also generated a niche for neo-Ottoman goods. Scents named after powerful women of the Ottoman court along with themed bathrobes, bathroom accessories, jewelry and even hair coloring are being sold. Ottoman-era aphrodisiacs to impress your partner have made a strong comeback and can be found in mainstream markets. Most of these products are not designed for Westerners fascinated by the ways of the East but for contemporary Turks. Today, one also has the option of partaking in the palace experience according to one's budget and tastes. For example, Les Ottomans, a fancy boutique and hotel on the Bosporus, offers rooms decorated to provide the unique atmosphere of the eras and tastes of 10 different sultans. US Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump has even visited the hotel.

While journalists working for pro-government media outlets rigorously tried to prove the harem’s educational value, others asked whether the harem could be called a school simply because the residents were educated in certain trades. Ozlem Kumrular, a historian and author of the book “Kosem Sultan,” about the prominent valide sultan, tweeted an image of a painting depicting nude women around a pool, and wrote, “The artist of this harem painting is the last caliph, Abdulmecid. Odd but true.” It is interesting to note that although Kumrular’s message received hundreds of retweets, no backers of Erdogan’s praise of the harem tried to explain the rationale behind the painting. Most of the replies were satirical. For instance, one read, “Could [Sultan] Abdulmecid know the harem better than Mrs. Erdogan? I wonder what class this was.”

Liao Liang's mission in the Kenyan capital is hardly confidential: As a senior editor of the China Global Television Network (CGTN), a subsidiary of Chinese state television, his task is that of shining a positive light on his country's ambitious activities -- particularly those in Africa, where China's reputation has suffered as its footprint has grown.

"It's an apartheid system," he says, with the Chinese at the top, then the whites, then the blacks and at the very bottom are the Kenyans. "We have to let the Chinese go first in the restrooms and we're only allowed to eat in the cafeteria after 1 p.m., after they have eaten. They treat us like their inferiors." Sometimes, James M. says, he only receives half of his contractual editor's salary of 2,000 euros per month. He says he is penalized 2,000 shillings - around 17 euros - for every mistake in his stories, including typos.

CGTN journalists aren't just there to ward off criticism of China's expansion in Africa but also to break the West's media dominance. The broadcaster has a similar mission in Africa as Russia's state broadcaster RT does in Europe.