Read on Twitter
It is true that most Taliban twitter accounts are bots. I have been studying them for sometime and wrote a short piece on them last year. But there are also many Twitter accounts that are handled by real people. here is what i found:
THREAD:
1. The Taliban is the largest Violent https://twitter.com/EjazMalikzada/status/1359925000854192134
THREAD:
1. The Taliban is the largest Violent https://twitter.com/EjazMalikzada/status/1359925000854192134
2.Religious Extremist (VRE) actor in the Afghan digital space. Besides maintaining a website in Dari, Pashto, Arabic, Urdu and English, the group and its media activists run many social media channels primarily in Pashto, but also in Farsi, English and even Russian and
3.Uzbek (Central Asian). The group uses almost all of the major social media platforms in #AFG. The availability of its propaganda contents in several languages and across all major social media platforms makes the Taliban the most digitally engaged VRE group in #AFG.
4. Though Taliban propaganda was available on the internet before 2011, the now-suspended @alemarahweb Twitter channel, which the group created in 2011, is regarded to be the first official attempt by the group to use social media technology for VRE purposes.
5. Entry into the social media world was a significant shift for the ultraconservative group who opposed almost all features of modernity back in 1994-2001 when they ruled most of #AFG. Almost a decade later since the opening of Taliban’s first Twitter channel, now the group’s
6. activists run many multimedia channels, online production studios, and social media channels on the internet. The group’s use of social media is partially aimed at responding to the demographic changes in #AFG over the last 20 years i.e. the emergence of a new ...
7. generation in #AFG many of whom live in the digital wonderland; realm where the largely uneducated and conservative Taliban fighters were considered aliens by many. Taliban use SM technology for both militant recruitment and information warfare purposes. The group’s...
8. Jihadi productions have over a hundred hours of war documentaries and video clips on Telegram that glorify the so called ‘Jihad’ and ‘resistance’ to what the Taliban frame as ‘foreign occupation’ of Afghanistan.
A key observation about the Taliban’s SM strategy is the...
A key observation about the Taliban’s SM strategy is the...
9. group’s increasing focus on Twitter as a platform of choice for information warfare. The Taliban’s focus on Twitter also seems to aim at connecting with the international audience. The majority (53%) of over 180 Taliban channels studied were on Twitter, of which
10. over 41% were created between August 2018 and December 2019. This period closely corresponds to the start of direct U.S.-Taliban negotiations, indicating deliberate use of Twitter for info warfare to influence intl public opinion.
Full report there: https://aiss.af/assets/aiss_publication/Mehr-Brief-Vol-04.pdf
Full report there: https://aiss.af/assets/aiss_publication/Mehr-Brief-Vol-04.pdf
