United Arab Emirates flag

United Arab Emirates

United Arab Emirates country

Date Released

20 October 2019

Twitter Takedowns

One

Twitter Attribution: United Arab Emirates

  • Operated uniquely from the United Arab Emirates

Key Messages & Targets

  • Demonising Qatar, the Houthis and Iran
  • Criticising the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar’s hosting of the World Cup
  • Promoting UAE foreign policy
  • Boosting the legitimacy of the Saudi-led war in Yemen to international audiences

Notable Tactics

  • Mass replying to official Twitter accounts of Western media outlets and US officials to surface the campaign in international political discourse
  • Impersonating international Twitter users

Twitter Activity

878,184

Tweets

4,248

Accounts in dataset

86%

(3,653)

Active accounts in dataset

46%

(403,965)

Were retweets

28%

(245,892)

Had media

26%

(228,328)

Had links

52%

(456,656)

Used hashtags


Takedown Timeline

Twitter Description

We suspended a separate group of 4,248 accounts operating uniquely from the UAE, mainly directed at Qatar and Yemen. These accounts were often employing false personae and tweeting about regional issues, such as the Yemeni Civil War and the Houthi Movement.


Twitter released a dataset containing a network of 4,248 accounts ‘operating uniquely’ from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The network probably sought to influence audiences across the world by tweeting in multiple languages, including English, Arabic, Spanish, Russian and Japanese. Some of the accounts in the Twitter dataset used fake personas and tweeted about regional issues. such as the Yemen civil war and the Houthi movement. The UAE has a history of hacking Qatari news and social media accounts and allegedly deploying social media bots to criticise the Qatari Government and royal family. In 2017, Twitter bots were allegedly used during the Gulf crisis primarily to increase negative information and propaganda from blockading countries, including the UAE, towards Qatar. According to Marc Owen Jones’ analysis of the dataset attributed by Twitter, accounts in the network posted more than 1 million tweets and retweets by both human trolls and possibly automated accounts. Those accounts promoted UAE foreign policy by demonising Qatar, the Houthis and Iran, and supported the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

Twitter has also removed a network of 271 accounts that were attributed to DotDev, a private technology company operating in the UAE and Egypt but most likely run out of Egypt (see the Egypt country summary for more details). Accounts in an April 2020 dataset associated with Saudi Arabia were also operating from the UAE (see the Saudi Arabia country summary for more details).


Here is the databroken down.


Tweets Over Time

Account Creation Over Time


Twitter Activity

Top 10 Most Retweeted Accounts

Top 10 Most Used Hashtags

Top 10 Most Mentioned Countries


Top 10 Most Shared Domains

DomainShares
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Top 10 Most Used Twitter Clients

Twitter ClientTimes Used
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Posting Activity

Recorded posting patterns, captured tweets, and media data.

Understanding behaviour by looking at daily patterns, captured tweets, and the type of media and commentary made by accounts.

United Arab Emirates Posting Patterns

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