``God says we are right!'': The Interplay between Religion and Propaganda on Arabic Social Media

Paper Title

"'God says we are right!': The Interplay between Religion and Propaganda on Arabic Social Media"

Publication Info

• Topic area: The intersection of religion and state-sponsored propaganda on social media in the Middle East.
• Keywords: Religion, propaganda, social media, Middle East, Quran, Hadith, state-sponsored accounts, Arabic, misinformation, political manipulation.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Limited quantitative studies exist on how religion is used in state-sponsored propaganda, particularly in the Middle East, where religion plays a significant societal role.
• Significance: Understanding this interplay is crucial for addressing misinformation, enhancing content moderation, and mitigating the misuse of religious texts for political purposes.
• Motivation and related work: Previous studies have analyzed religious content on social media and state-sponsored propaganda but have not focused on their intersection, especially in the context of Arabic and Islamic content. This study addresses the gap by analyzing how state-sponsored accounts use religious texts to further political agendas.

Solution

• Proposed approach: A mixed-methods analysis of 124 million tweets from 32,500 state-sponsored accounts in the Middle East to examine the patterns and purposes of sharing religious texts.
• Novelty:
  1. First large-scale computational study quantifying religious propaganda on social media in the Middle East.
  2. Analysis of how state-sponsored accounts use Quran and Hadith to align with political agendas.
  3. Identification of thematic patterns in the use of religious texts for propaganda.
  4. Recommendations for designing more religion-sensitive social media platforms.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Data collection from Twitter Transparency Report datasets (124M tweets from accounts linked to Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Iran, and Turkey).
  • Filtering Arabic tweets containing Quran and Hadith using established algorithms.
  • Thematic analysis of political tweets using a reflexive coding process.
  • Comparison of sharing patterns with existing literature on religious content.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • State-sponsored accounts frequently share Quran and Hadith, with 24,643 Quran tweets and 132,350 Hadith tweets from Saudi Arabia alone.
  • Sharing patterns differ by country and align with state agendas (e.g., Saudi Arabia emphasizes "Belief & Believers," while Iran focuses on Shia-specific themes like "Virtues").
  • Political messages include support for allies, criticism of opponents, and justification of political actions using religious texts.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Identified significant deviations in the topical and authenticity distribution of shared religious texts compared to normal accounts and Islamic references.
  • Highlighted the use of fabricated Hadith, particularly in Iranian datasets (8.3% fabricated vs. 1% in literature).
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Manual validation of 4,000 tweets for thematic analysis.
  • High precision in identifying Quran (95%) and Hadith (100%) in tweets.
  • Thematic coding achieved a Cohen’s Kappa of 0.91, indicating strong inter-rater reliability.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Focused only on Arabic content and Islamic texts, excluding other languages, religions, and regions.
  • Limited to text-based analysis; multimedia content was not explored.
  • Reliant on datasets released by Twitter, which may not represent all state-sponsored propaganda.

Summary

This study investigates how state-sponsored propaganda accounts in the Middle East use Quran and Hadith to further political agendas. Analyzing 124 million tweets, the authors found that religious texts are shared in patterns reflecting state interests, with tactics including support for allies, criticism of opponents, and political justification. The findings highlight the distortion of online religious content and propose recommendations for designing religion-sensitive social media platforms. While limited to Arabic and Islamic content, this work provides a foundation for understanding religious propaganda and its implications for content moderation and social media design.