Twitter Investigation Agency: No to War Tweets Outnumber War Supporters in Sudan

The Valent Project, a fact-checking agency, has revealed widespread manipulation on the social media platform Twitter, aiming to portray Sudanese individuals as supporters of war, while the reality is quite the opposite. Genuine and authentic accounts, in fact, advocate for ending violence.

After conducting an investigation that analyzed 12,545 war-supportive tweets in Sudan, using the Coefficient of Traffic Manipulation (CTM) tool across 2,267 accounts, it became evident that only 50 accounts were responsible for 49% of the total tweets. Such a significant number of tweets necessitated further scrutiny.

The CTM system operates by categorizing account activity based on the number of retweets per user, the percentage of tweets, and the percentage of total visits among the top 50 active users.

The investigation revealed traditional indicators indicating that 5% of the top accounts, accounting for over half of the studied tweets (113 accounts), employed a bot algorithm system. These accounts engaged in activities such as creating accounts, sending mass tweets, and registering multiple accounts. It was also discovered that these fake accounts were created around the time of the December revolution, which ousted the military dictator Omar al-Bashir, and they employed racist expressions.

On the other hand, the examination of genuine accounts, which constituted the majority of the study conducted by the Valent Project, observed their inclination towards more conciliatory messages, less extremism, and a focus on ending violence and protecting civilians.

The agency stated that the results highlight one of the most prevalent deceptive practices on Twitter, indicating the clear general objective of these fake accounts: to mislead Sudanese individuals, foreign observers, researchers, and international entities, making them believe that there is a large faction supporting war. However, the reality is quite the opposite.