Electronic propaganda fills Gulf’s media vacuum

It is still too early to judge the effectiveness of the Arab Gulf campaign launched by Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed Al Hamed, chairman of the National Media Office in the UAE. against electronic propaganda, the so-called “electronic flies”, or e-flies. 

The campaign has succeeded in triggering an immediate official and popular response. The Gulf public, including both citizens and officials, has been frustrated with the extent of abuse heaped up on an almost daily basis on individuals, institutions, leaders and even ideas. 

E-flies have violated some of the main foundations upon which societies are based, the relations between citizens and their countries, and the relations between nations. 

It does not matter whether electronic propaganda originates from genuine social media accounts or from bots. Real accounts of well-known individuals have caused as much harm as fake or bot accounts created by local, regional or Arab political actors. 

The chaos reached a dangerous level at the height of the crisis between moderate Arab countries, on the one hand, and the Qatari-Turkish-Muslim Brotherhood camp, on the other. E-flies excelled in inventing offensive and vulgar vocabulary. Then, came the Gulf summit in Al-Ula leading to the de-escalation of crises between Arab Gulf states, followed by Gulf overtures to Erdogan’s Turkey, which was humbled by its economic crises and hence forced to temper its excesses. Even some factions of the Muslim Brotherhood seem to have opted for de-escalation, either to accommodate Qatar’s and Turkey’s new policies, or because they feared losing their Istanbul haven and being removed from the list of recipients of financial support from the global Muslim Brotherhood networks. 

What is paradoxical is that some of the hotspots of electronic propaganda seem to have been unwilling to accept this fait accompli. They began to look for new enemies, even among their recent allies. It is difficult to tell to what extent old enemies are behind this incitement against yesterday’s allies. Some of the electronic propaganda actors behaved as is they were born to stay. It did not really matter to them who were their new allies and enemies. 

The call launched by Sheikh Abdullah Al-Hamed may be the first serious attempt to curtail the electronic propaganda clusters, especially through the #Block_Without_Comment initiative. The basic aim of the call/campaign is to refrain from responding or offering any comments to offensive X accounts. The initiative makes sense at least for one simple reason: any attempt to respond to comments is an invitation to create a new cluster of “good” e-flies aimed at countering “evil” e-flies. What the Gulf people have learned over the past ten years is that flies are flies, whether good or evil. Better to close the door to flies of all kinds. 

It is difficult to imagine that e-flies will go away. Their numbers might diminish for a while, then they will eventually return and multiply. They are called flies because one of their survival defence mechanism is their large numbers. 

Electronic propaganda had come to fill a media vacuum.  A similar vacuum is now emerging after the increased effectiveness of the Gulf campaign against electronic propaganda. This vacuum is of course primarily media-related, as it specifically has to do, to be more accurate, with the absence of objective media. 

E-flies found a tangible media vacuum right after the so-called Arab Spring. I do not know if one can objectively describe Al Jazeera’s incitement-oriented media practices, before and during the first phase of the “Arab Spring”, as an early version of buzz media. But one can objectively argue that Arab media were unable to keep up with the changes. Al Jazeera’s constraints due to the restrictions following the power transition in Qatar and the emergence then of a short-lived media truce, made it urgent to weaponise Twitter (currently X) and launch the idea of systematic e-flies. Buzz gained another platform. 

Electronic propaganda had a free hand during more than a decade during which it spread seditious messages and lies, while traditional media failed twice to keep pace. They failed once when they gave electronic propaganda the opportunity of entering the world of legitimate media, and failed a second time when they did not endorse the idea of upgrading the media process in terms of news, opinion and debate. 

During this period, electronic propaganda not only gained a wider public, but also added to its arsenal a new tool, one of fabricating images, videos and news with the introduction of Deep Fakes and artificial intelligence technologies. 

the introduction of Deep Fakes and artificial intelligence technologies. 

Today’s regional enthusiasm for a unified position against electronic propaganda stems in part from the realisation that artificial intelligence is a weapon that no one can control and that AI could eventually cause a crisis for all. The region has miraculously survived the fallouts of the “Arab Spring”. There is no guarantee that new conflicts, even if only waged via Deep Fakes, will not usher in more devastating crises. The region has been swept by a tidal wave of hysteria over the Gaza war, that is intensively exploited by Iran’s allies. 

Is electronic propaganda a global or regional phenomenon? It is undoubtedly a global phenomenon. But contrary to the situation in the region, there is in the West, for example, a wide area covered by traditional media. People with extremist ideas have no need to rely much on electronic propaganda. The Russians tried to exploit social media to unsettle the West’s political system and have succeeded in their endeavour to a large extent.  We witnessed that with the rise of the likes of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson to power, and the growing influence of such ideas as those that led to Britain’s exit from the European Union (Brexit). 

But the West held together, paid more attention, and identified the loopholes in the system, which led traditional media to regain their role.

Now that the response to the initiative against electronic propaganda has begun to leave a vacuum in terms of attention by many in the Gulf public regarding recent developments, it has become imperative for traditional media to take the initiative of preventing the exacerbation again of electronic propaganda or similar phenomena. One cannot say that objective media is the alternative, as it is not fair to make such a comparison. 

But the lack of responsiveness by regional media to the magnitude of political and social changes in the region, is paving the way for the emergence of various tools, old and new, that could spark another crisis of confidence in news, analysis and opinion, and create a fertile environment for conspiracy theories and provide electronic sedition actors with fresh material, real and fake. 

We must pay attention to the need to distinguish between blocking the accounts of electronic flies, and not boycotting what I will call, for lack of a better term, “electronic bees”. 

Many people who are unable to make their voices heard through traditional media, are only trying to present debatable viewpoints that are not aimed at insulting or offending anyone. Until the moment comes when regional media institutions are able to objectively convey their voices and provide platforms for national debate, the buzz of the “electronic bees” must be tolerated and not confused with the destructive buzz of the “evil flies”. 

In the current phase, we need to control the public scene, at least when it comes to the media. We cannot lose the challenge posed by all types of flies, good and bad.   

Haitham El Zobaidi is the Executive Editor of Al Arab Publishing House.