AoIR 2020

Investigating Bots and Coordinated Influence Campaigns in Twitter Discussions of the 2019-20 Iran Protests

Ehsan Dehghan, Brenda Moon, Tobias Keller, Tim Graham, Axel Bruns, and Dan Angus

• 27-31 Oct. 2020 – Association of Internet Researchers 2020 conference, online

Twitter is a vital platform for organizing, coordinating, and amplifying voices during protests all around the world, especially in non-democratic countries (Tufekci 2017). Yet, not only does this platform allow minorities and protesters to have a voice and be heard, but also to spread propaganda, sow discord, and crowd out genuine voices – sometimes even through the use of social bots (Shao et al. 2018).

Although Twitter is a globally used platform for protest movements, many studies focus on English-speaking and democratic countries representing the so-called West. Only a very few studies focus on the Middle East and, if so, limit their investigation to the English content (e.g. Featherman 2015; Thieltges et al. 2018). We overcome this research gap and investigate the Persian-, English-, and Arabic- speaking actors and content during Twitter discussions of the 2019-20 protests in Iran.

Video of the Presentation

Extended Abstract

Dehghan, Ehsan, Brenda Moon, Tobias Keller, Tim Graham, Axel Bruns, and Dan Angus. “Investigating Bots and Coordinated Influence Campaigns in Twitter Discussions of the 2019-20 Iran Protests.” Selected Papers of Internet Research (Oct. 2020). DOI: 10.5210/spir.v2020i0.11199.