Today is the 6th anniversary of the liberation of Kobane from Islamic State. For me, it's associated with this viral tweet and photo, which kicked off a global wave of media misinfo about Rehana, the "Angel of Kobane." Here's a thread about what happened. It may feel familiar.

That tweet created the legend of Rehana. News articles began reporting the remarkable story of Rehana, the ISIS slayer. No one had quotes from her and details were sketchy. But the tale was irresistible.

Not long after, ISIS supporters claimed that she had been killed. Social media accounts sympathetic to ISIS began circulating an image of a fighter holding a decapitated female head. They claimed it was Rehana.

Once again, the press picked up the story, this time to mourn her apparent death. Rehana the "poster child for Kudish female fighters" had been beheaded. It was tragic.

Pawan Durani, the man who sent the original tweet about her, tried to dispel the claims. Was it ISIS disinfo? “Rehana is very much alive. ISIS supporters just trying to lift morale,” he was quoted as saying.

This kicked off another round of coverage, seemingly debunking the claim from Islamic State. The Daily Mail reported that Rehana had escaped Kobane and was safe in Turkey. What drama!

At this point no one had interviewed her. No one had other photos of her. Rehana was a one-shot wonder, an internet legend, a media darling, and maybe a target of ISIS propaganda.

The mystery persisted until Swedish journalist Carl Drott posted on Facebook: “I met her during the ceremony when the unit was set up on 22 August. The purpose of such units is primarily to relieve YPG/YPJ (“the army”) and Asayish (“the police”) of duties inside Kobani town."

He said that given her unit's duties it was "very unlikely" she'd killed 100 ISIS fighters. BBC Monitoring confirmed details about the photo, and said there was no evidence to back up the fantastic claims about her. Her name probably wasn't Rehana, either. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-29853513

Carl Drott said it well.

I told the story of Rehana in my 2015 study, "Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content," which info for this thread is taken from. It was an early study of viral hoaxes and our polluted information ecosystem. This is from the end section of my Rehana case study. I guess it holds up.

You can download my research paper here: https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8Q81RHH

As for Parwan Durani, the originator of the Rehana story, he's still on Twitter. His current current bio reads in part, "Anything retweeted is not adopted as a statement of fact."

/end