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Russian disinformation may come first to mind for interfering in U.S. politics, but some of the most damning evidence of efforts to influence the American public leads to Washington’s allies in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are at the forefront of undermining democratic deliberation–from manipulating the impact of Donald Trump’s tweets, to tricking editors across the world into publishing propaganda.

The FBI in 2019 found evidence that employees at Twitter’s San Fransciso headquarters, groomed with bribes such as luxury watches, were co-ordinating with members of the Saudi royal family to obtain private information from Twitter users. In August 2022, a jury found one of these men guilty. Two others couldn’t be tried because they were in Saudi Arabia.

Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Social Limited, worked with the UAE to create a social media advertising campaign attacking Qatar, a Gulf rival that’s home of the largest U.S. military base in the region. Though better known its use of “soft power” through projects like Al Jazeera, Qatar has also been reported to use disinformation, as well as allegedly hacking the email of the Emirates’ powerful ambassador to Washington.

the State Department suspended its funding for a mysterious website and Twitter account, IranDisInfo.org and @IranDisInfo, after the project attacked human rights workers, journalists and academics, many of whom are based inside the U.S. But the role of the U.S. government in financing IranDisInfo’s criticisms of Human Rights Watch and the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a group that has been outspoken in warning about the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive military posture towards Iran, appears to have been in collaboration with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). FDD pushes for military confrontation with Iran and has received funding from some of Trump and the GOP’s biggest campaign megadonors. While simultaneously denying their support for a war with Iran, FDD’s scholars have repeatedly urged U.S. military action against the Islamic Republic.

Dubowitz and his FDD colleagues have been advising the Trump White House on their regime change strategy in Iran.

FDD’s involvement with IranDisInfo was thinly concealed.  The website and Twitter account heavily promoted Mark Dubowitz and FDD advisor Saeed Ghasseminejad. Buried on FDD’s website is an “Iran Disinformation Project” that publishes the identical content from Ghasseminejad that was cross-posted on IranDisInfo’s website. And on at least five occasions FDD’s Twitter account promoted articles by Ghasseminejad “in @IranDisInfo.” Except the links didn’t send users to IranDisInfo’s website. Instead, the links were to FDD’s own “Iran Disinformation Project,” hosted on FDD’s website.

"Cyber attacks are the new reality of modern warfare," said Hayat Alvi, lecturer in Middle Eastern studies at the US Naval War College. "We can expect more... from all directions. In war, the greatest casualty is the truth. Each side will try to manipulate information to make their own side look like it is gaining while the other is losing."

In April, Saudi-based broadcaster Al Arabiya briefly lost control of one of its twitter accounts, which was then used to spread a string of stories suggesting a political crisis in Qatar. Tweets included claims that the Qatari prime minister had been sacked, his daughter arrested in London and that a coup orchestrated by the army chief was underway.

there seems little sign such incidents made a significant difference either on the ground in Syria or to the wider geopolitical picture

a Finnish investigative journalist, has faced down death threats and harassment over her work exposing Russia’s propaganda machine long before the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. In January, the U.S. State Department took notice, telling Aro she would be honored with the prestigious International Women of Courage Award, to be presented in Washington by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Weeks later, the State Department rescinded the award offer. A State Department spokesperson said it was due to a “regrettable error,” but Aro and U.S. officials familiar with the internal deliberations tell a different story. They say the department revoked her award after U.S. officials went through Aro’s social media posts and found she had also frequently criticized President Donald Trump.

There is no indication that the decision to revoke the award came from the secretary of state or the White House. Officials who spoke to FP have suggested the decision came from lower-level State Department officials wary of the optics of Pompeo granting an award to an outspoken critic of the Trump administration.

the incident underscores how skittish some officials—career and political alike—have become over government dealings with vocal critics of a notoriously thin-skinned president.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is launching Tracker-19 to monitor and evaluate the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on journalism and to offer recommendations on how to defend the right to information.

Called “Tracker 19” in reference not only to Covid-19 but also article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this project aims to evaluate the pandemic’s impacts on journalism. It will document state censorship and deliberate disinformation, and their impact on the right to reliable news and information. It will also make recommendations on how to defend journalism.

without journalism, humankind could not address any of the major global challenges, including the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, discrimination against women and corruption.

In recent weeks, pro-Saudi Twitter accounts have been systematically spreading rumours of unrest in Qatar, AFP analysis of hundreds of tweets and twitter interactions shows.Many of the accounts amplifying the rumours had profile images of the Saudi leadership, mentioned them in their handles and retweeted or liked material featuring the royal family or gave their location as inside the kingdom.

"Anyone spreading this news is technically breaking Saudi law, it's illegal to spread rumours," Owen Jones of Qatar's Hamad bin Khalifa University told AFP."In order to be high-profile and get away with it, then it has to have the tacit approval of the regime."

Saudi observers say the kingdom itself is a victim of fake news alleged to originate from Qatar and its allies Turkey and Iran.The UAE, Saudi's principal ally, has also been the target of online disinformation campaigns, including one claiming Abu Dhabi's Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed had been assassinated, which Abu Dhabi blamed on Qatar.

With foreign press virtually absent inside Iran — where authorities are arresting local journalists, restricting internet access and allegedly spreading misinformation online — distant correspondents such as Esfandiari face a deluge of challenges in getting accurate news about Iran to the rest of the world.

“These people are really risking everything to send us videos of the protests,” Esfandiari said. “And they come speak to us because they trust us, and they know the state media are never going to give them a platform.”

Western news organizations have been almost entirely shut out of the country by state restrictions and security concerns. Meanwhile, the government has arrested more than 60 Iranian journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Niloofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, among the reporters who helped break the story of Amini’s death, were charged with acting as CIA spies, an offense punishable by the death penalty.

the Syrian Bar Association has "asked a legal committee to study the situation of crimes perpetrated by a number of Arab and international TV stations and individuals who have contributed to the media forgery and acts of instigation to destabilise Syria".

"Nasrallah spoke of the ongoing disinformation and fabrications campaign against Syria and of huge amounts of money paid by US bodies and by others to some Syrian figures and sections under the pretext of supporting democracy as to destabilise Syria."

a generous helping of foreign conspiracy theory from the Tehran Times in Iran. Quoting a Syrian writer, Colette Khoury, it says Syria is paying the price "for saying no to Israel and America for a long time". "We are proud of belonging to Syria, the only independent state that refused to give up resistance," Khoury says. "It isn’t a matter of reform, not any more. It is about Syria and the Syrian people."

it’s not just Kremlin-produced disinformation that Americans may have stumbled upon recently. Browsing Facebook and Twitter — and even just perusing the magazine rack at their local Walmart — they may have also been exposed to propaganda supporting the ambitious goals of two oil-rich Arab Gulf countries

when Saudi Arabia and the UAE launched a boycott and blockade of the tiny peninsula state of Qatar last year, organizations with ties to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi tried something new: They worked to sway American public opinion through online and social media campaigns, bringing a complicated, distant conflict among three Washington allies to US shores

As they took steps against Doha, Saudi Arabia and the UAE also initiated propaganda efforts in the US aimed at weakening Washington’s alliance with Qatar — which hosts the largest American military base in the Middle East — while also enhancing their own images.

"Media literacy has long focused on personal responsibility, which can not only imbue individuals with a false sense of confidence in their skills, but also put the onus of monitoring media effects on the audience, rather than media creators, social media platforms, or regulators,"

the need to better understand the modern media environment, which is heavily driven by algorithm-based personalization on social-media platforms, and the need to be more systematic about evaluating the impact of various media-literacy strategies and interventions

In response, bills to promote media literacy in schools have been introduced or passed in more than a dozen states. A range of nonprofit, corporate, and media organizations have stepped up efforts to promote related curricula and programs. Such efforts should be applauded—but not viewed as a "panacea," the Data & Society researchers argue.

Badani is part of a network of at least 19 fake personas that has spent the past year placing more than 90 opinion pieces in 46 different publications. The articles heaped praise on the United Arab Emirates and advocated for a tougher approach to Qatar, Turkey, Iran and its proxy groups in Iraq and Lebanon. 

“This vast influence operation highlights the ease with which malicious actors can exploit the identity of real people, dupe international news outlets, and have propaganda of unknown provenance legitimized through reputable media,” Marc Owen Jones, an assistant professor at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar who first noticed suspicious posts by members of the network, told The Daily Beast. “It’s not just fake news we need to be wary of, but fake journalists.”

placed articles critical of Qatar and supportive of tougher sanctions on Iran in conservative North American outlets like Human Events and conservative writer Andy Ngo’s The Post Millennial, as well as Israeli and Middle Eastern newspapers like The Jerusalem Post and Al Arabiya, and Asian newspapers like the South China Morning Post.

Turkish authorities have opened a legal inquiry against 30 people accused of tweeting disinformation about the health of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.They posted "manipulative content" on Twitter using the hashtag #olmus (dead in Turkish), police said.

“Internet users will no longer be able to know if their online conduct will be considered a crime or not, resulting in even more online censorship.”

he law is paving the way to further issues, such as webpage admins being held responsible for comments posted by others. “The scope of the text is so broad it can be applied to admins of WhatsApp groups too, making normal users potential censors of free speech.”

Around a dozen rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, have urged the Jordanian government to withdraw the bill.  “The draft legislation will jeopardise digital rights, including freedom of expression and the right to information, and will ultimately fail in achieving the Jordanian government’s stated goals of tackling 'disinformation', 'hate speech' and 'online defamation',” their joint statement said

Turkey's parliament on Thursday approved a tough pre-election law that could see reporters and social media users jailed for up to three years for spreading "fake news".

cement the government's already-firm grip on the media eight months before a general election that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan enters trailing in the polls.

The Council of Europe said the measure's vague definition of "disinformation" and accompanying threat of jail could have a "chilling effect and increased self-censorship, not least in view of the upcoming elections in June 2023".

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.