Regimes across the Middle East have increasingly utilized different social media platforms in their pursuits to advance their respective political agendas. Engineered as a mechanism to shape public discourse, these calculated campaigns are centered around the widespread dissemination of regime-backed narratives in the attempt to manufacture a sense of regime legitimacy and undermine rivals at the domestic, regional, and international levels.
Although regime-engineered campaigns of propaganda are not new to the region, the expanded manipulation of social media platforms demonstrates how government strategies are constantly evolving and taking new forms in order to acclimate themselves to new technological, political, and social contexts. This adaptation is best evidenced in the period following the 2011 Arab uprisings, which witnessed not only mass mobilization against these governments, but also the attempt to break these hegemonic regime narratives that have been weaponized as a means of repression and power projection.
How did the proliferation of these regime-constructed narratives progressively emerge since the 2011 Arab uprisings and how did they assume a central role in both interstate and intrastate competition? One particularly important aspect in this case is the widespread mobilization of automated social media accounts – “bots” – and how these propagated regime narratives overlap with geopolitical rivalries within the region and serve as a tool for the advancement of domestic and regional policies.
