BAGHDAD — Conspiracy theories, fake reports, and mudslinging — in Iraq, false news thrives and risks real-life consequences as authorities struggle to counteract its spread.
اضافة اعلان
Misinformation about political, social, security, and economic issues abound online in the country, said an official from the Tech 4 Peace collective, an Iraqi organization that tracks “fake news”.
“There are hundreds of pages circulating false information on Facebook and Twitter,” the official told AFP.
“Iraq has become a virtual battleground of fake news” both in local politics and between major international players vying for influence in the tinderbox country, the official said.
“And it is a free for all.”
The official pointed to an incident that happened in January as tense relations between
Saudi Arabia and Iraq were easing with the opening of a border crossing between the neighbors.
Radical groups loyal to Iran — regional rival of Saudi Arabia and heavyweight in Iraq — launched a campaign on social media accusing a Saudi national of carrying out a double suicide attack in Baghdad that killed 32 people.
His picture was published on Twitter and Facebook and widely shared, even though it was revealed that he had in fact blown himself up in a rare suicide attack in Saudi Arabia in 2015.
Daesh eventually claimed the Baghdad bombing.
Monitoring team
In the restive country that has seen almost two decades of conflict and crisis, concerns over the impact of misinformation prompted the authorities to set up a “surveillance service” tasked with tracking information.
Staff from the interior ministry spend hours in an office full of computer and television screens monitoring endless streams of news on television and online.
“When a piece of information seems suspect, they raise the alarm” and an investigation is carried out to confirm or debunk the news, said General Nebras Mohammad.
who heads the misinformation department, which includes the surveillance service.
About 25 million Iraqis use social media, according to DataReportal figures, but only 34,000 of them follow the surveillance service Facebook page, where debunked false news is posted.
The Tech 4 Peace official said that Facebook is “the main vehicle for false news in Iraq”, and that there is a new trending fake story “almost daily”.
Some of it is ultimately harmless, like recent widely shared posts claiming a young man from Mosul had married four girls in one day that was shown by Tech 4 Peace to be a promotion for a beauty salon.
But some cases are more insidious, such as using a blaze at a COVID-19 hospital in Baghdad in late April that killed 82 people to garner likes and follows by posting fabricated reports of more fires at other health centers.
Stirring up division
Sometimes misinformation takes on a more political slant, stirring up still latent sectarian tensions in the country.
“These are organized campaigns of thousands of pages, mainly via Twitter, with political objectives,” led by both pro-Iranian factions and their opponents, the Tech 4 Peace official said.
“Millions of dollars are spent” on this, the official added.
In late August 2020, a rumor spread online that a man from the Sunni-majority city of Tikrit had been arrested with a car loaded with explosives in the Shiite-majority south.
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