Videos by Marc O Jones
In a 17 minute video, Dr. Marc Owen Jones, an Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Ha... more In a 17 minute video, Dr. Marc Owen Jones, an Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University and a DAWN Non-Resident Fellow, speaks about disinformation campaigns in the Middle East.
He explains how Middle Eastern governments are increasingly important exporters of disinformation and targets global audiences, from the US to Europe and Asia.”
To drive his point, Dr. Jones describes a first-hand, personal account about a disinformation campaign targeting Nobel Laureate and Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman after her appointment as a member of Facebook’s oversight committee, tasked with helping“democratize the process of moderating content.” 193 views
Books by Marc O Jones
Third World Quarterly, 2025
This paper examines Israel’s systematic deployment of disinformation during its war on Gaza since... more This paper examines Israel’s systematic deployment of disinformation during its war on Gaza since October 2023, introducing the concept of ‘alethocide’ – the systemic destruction of truth. Using a mixed-methods approach combining cross-media ethnography and open-source intelligence, this study analyzes key disinformation campaigns across digital platforms, including the widely circulated “40 beheaded babies” narrative, state-sponsored influence operations targeting African Americans, and coordinated attacks on UNRWA. The research proposes a novel framework for assessing disinformation campaigns based on dimensions including intensity, reach, depth, penetration, recidivism, hierarchy, harm, and longevity. Findings reveal Israel’s production of atrocity propaganda, systematic efforts to dehumanize Palestinians, and organized campaigns to undermine humanitarian organizations. The study demonstrates how disinformation is modulated by geopolitical actors, media outlets, and tech platforms, which act as selective amplifiers within the broader technopolitical landscape. The research situates this alethocide within the context of settler colonialism and epistemic violence, arguing that disinformation serves not just to mask violence but to actively construct alternative realities that legitimize genocide. By examining the intersection of disinformation with power structures and technology, this study advances beyond traditional episodic definitions of disinformation to demonstrate how it functions as a component of symbolic power that reinforces existing geopolitical hierarchies.
Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East Deception, Disinformation and Social Media, 2022
This chapter highlights the capacious reach of Gulf-led deception operations into the world of pr... more This chapter highlights the capacious reach of Gulf-led deception operations into the world of professional football. In doing so, it addresses the growing assertiveness of Saudi Arabia in extending its influence operations under the tutelage of MBS and how the use of sockpuppets was leveraged on Twitter to spread and influence narratives about the proposed takeover by Saudi's Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Newcastle United Football Club (NUFC). It also explores the discursive phenomenon of disinformation meta narratives, whereby disinformation from other instances, in this case the Gulf Crisis, is combined with the new narratives in order to rationalise foreign policy to new, impressionable and invested audiences. Here, NUFC fans were made to believe that Saudi's bid to take over NUFC was being scuppered by Qatar as the result of a feud, and not reasons related to piracy and human rights. Crucially, it highlights how football fans in general are being targeted by the deception order, which is monetising deception to either engage in sportswashing or negative campaigning.
Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media
Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media, 2022
You are being lied to by people who don't even exist. Digital deception is the new face of inform... more You are being lied to by people who don't even exist. Digital deception is the new face of information warfare. Social media has been weaponised by states and commercial entities alike, as bots and trolls proliferate and users are left to navigate an infodemic of fake news and disinformation. In the Persian Gulf and the wider Middle East, where authoritarian regimes continue to innovate and adapt in the face of changing technology, online deception has reached new levels of audacity. From pro-Saudi entities that manipulate the tweets of the US president, to the activities of fake journalists and Western PR companies that whitewash human rights abuses, Marc Owen Jones' meticulous investigative research uncovers the full gamut of tactics used by Gulf regimes and their allies to deceive domestic and international audiences. In an age of global deception, this book charts the lengths bad actors will go to when seeking to impose their ideology and views on citizens around the world.
https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/digital-authoritarianism-in-the-middle-east/
Power 3.0 , 2022
Despite efforts by the EU and the U.S. governments to curtail Russian disinformation through sanc... more Despite efforts by the EU and the U.S. governments to curtail Russian disinformation through sanctioning or blocking state-backed media such as RT and Sputnik News, thousands of fake Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts are currently spreading Russian state propaganda and disinformation. In fact, some accounts do so in a coordinated fashion in both Mandarin Chinese and English, helping to peddle Beijing’s propagandistic narratives, too.
Through a variety of network analysis techniques, I identified between 2-7,000 fake Twitter accounts spreading Chinese- and English-language propaganda and disinformation since March 2022. Yet, the real number of fake accounts is likely to be much higher. The content includes videos, cartoons, and infographics that amplify a variety of pro-Beijing, pro-Moscow, antidemocratic, and anti-Western narratives. These Twitter accounts match many of the narratives used by fake accounts on Facebook and YouTube.
Bahrain: Media-Assisted Authoritarianism
Arab Media Systems, 2021
The media ecosystem in Bahrain has primarily been shaped by the security interests of the ruling ... more The media ecosystem in Bahrain has primarily been shaped by the security interests of the ruling family and its formal and informal protectors, initially the British, and following Independence in 1971, Saudi Arabia and the United States. From its inception just before the Second World War, to the Uprising of 2011, television, radio, and the local press have been leveraged as a means of distributing state propaganda and public relations. Technological change has been embraced, but only to the extent to which it facilitates Bahrain’s neoliberal development as a commercial ICT hub. The rise of citizen journalism, social media, and de-spatialized technologies has prompted some resistance to this top-down media-assisted authoritarianism, but the regime has adapted to instrumentalize these new technologies as tools of surveillance.
Cambridge University Press (Middle East Studies Series), Jul 16, 2020
Exploring Bahrain's modern history through the lens of repression, this concise and accessible ac... more Exploring Bahrain's modern history through the lens of repression, this concise and accessible account work spans the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, looking at all forms of political repression from legal, statecraft, police brutality and informational controls. Considering several episodes of contention in Bahrain, from tribal resistance to the British reforms of the 1920s, the rise of the Higher Executive Committee in the 1950s, the leftist agitation of the 1970s, the 1990s Intifada and the 2011 Uprising, Marc Owen Jones offers never before seen insights into the British role in Bahrain, as well as the activities of the Al Khalifa Ruling Family. From the plundering of Bahrain's resources, to new information about the torture and murder of Bahrain civilians, this study reveals new facts about Bahrain's troubled political history. Using freedom of information requests, historical documents, interviews, and data from social media, this is a rich and original interdisciplinary history of Bahrain over one hundred years.
Awards by Marc O Jones
Journal of Arabian Studies, 2017
The Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies’ Evaluation Committee is very pleased to p... more The Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies’ Evaluation Committee is very pleased to present the 2016 Dissertation Award to MARC OWEN JONES for his dissertation: Methods of Repression in Bahrain during the 20th and 21st Century: From the Civil List to Social Media
Books (Edited) by Marc O Jones
Gulfization of the Arab World
From projecting ideology and influence, to maintaining a notion of 'Gulfness' through the select... more From projecting ideology and influence, to maintaining a notion of 'Gulfness' through the selective exclusion or inclusion of certain beliefs, cultures and people, the notion of Gulfization is increasingly pertinent as Gulf countries occupy a greater political and economic role in wider Middle East politics. This volume discusses the notion of Gulfization, and examines how thoughts, ideologies, way of life and practises are transmitted, changed, and transduced inside and outside the Gulf. From historical perspectives such as the impact of the 1952 Egyptian Revolution in Yemen, to studies on the contemporary projection of Salafism or hyper-nationalism in the Gulf monarchies, this book explores, contends, and critiques the transnational and regional currents that are making, and unmaking, the new Gulf Moment. This volume is based on the 28th Gulf Conference held at the University of Exeter in 2016.
Bahrain's Uprising: Resistance and Repression in the Gulf (Edited Book), 2015
The 2011 uprisings that started in Tunisia and swept across the region have been extensively co... more The 2011 uprisings that started in Tunisia and swept across the region have been extensively covered, but until now the Gulf island of Bahrain has almost been forgotten from the narration of events that have dramatically changed the region. Bahrain's Uprising examines the ongoing protests and the state’s repression, revealing a sophisticated society shaped by its political struggle against a reactionary ruling elite that see’s the island as the bounty of conquest. The regime survived largely through foreign political and economic patronage, notably from Britain, America, and Saudi Arabia – a patronage so deep, that the island became the first immediate target of the Arab Spring’s counter-revolutionary mobilisation that continues today.
The book explores the contentious politics of Bahrain, and charts the way in which a dynamic culture of street protest, a strong moral belief in legitimate democratic demands and creative forms of resistance continue to hamper the efforts of the ruling elite to rebrand itself as a liberal, modernising monarchy. Drawing on powerful testimonies, interviews and conversations from those involved, this broad collection of writings provides a rarely heard voice for the lived experiences of Bahrainis and the research of young scholars studying them. From the trial speech by one of the most prominent political leaders of the uprising, to the evocative prose of an imprisoned poet, the book harnesses the power of storytelling, to lead into scholarly articles that address the themes of space, social movements, postcolonialism, social media, and the role of foreign patrons. Published on the eve of the 2016 bicentenary of British-Bahrain relations, the book in particular focuses on the role of the British government, together showing the depth of historical grievance beyond the sectarian narrative that has come to define the limited reporting of events in the country.
Bahrain’s Uprising provides a powerful insight into the Arab Spring's forgotten front, and will be of lasting value not only to scholars and students of the Middle East, but also to activists seeking to learn from, and build upon, Bahrain history and the uprising's legacy.
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles by Marc O Jones
Critical Studies in Media Communication , 2025
Introduction
This forum in Critical Studies in Media Communication marks, what has been, arguably... more Introduction
This forum in Critical Studies in Media Communication marks, what has been, arguably, a century since the birth of modern Propaganda Studies in the 1920s. The flurry of scholarship including Lippmann’s Public Opinion (Citation1922) and Edward Bernays’ Propaganda (Citation1928), was provoked by the rise of fascist and Stalinist propaganda in Europe when mass media was developing. It is sadly fitting that today’s renewal of the discipline accompanies propaganda’s service to resurgent authoritarianism. We thus envisioned this forum to consider what we have learned from this century of propaganda scholarship and practice, and indeed what we still need to learn to challenge its authoritarian utility. Therefore we ask “whither Propaganda Studies?” as we hurtle into its digital future.
Journal of Arabian Studies, 2024
What constitutes the “Gulf” has been a subject of scholarly interest and criticaldisagreement. Wh... more What constitutes the “Gulf” has been a subject of scholarly interest and criticaldisagreement. What shapes studies about and within the Gulf? Knowledge productionconcerning the Gulf has long endured a debate on whether the region (and the field) meritsa categorization of exceptionalism. Following on from a previous article in this journal,which charted the evolution of Gulf studies, this special issue is intended as a point ofdeparture from discourses premised on the dichotomy of exceptional/unexceptional andsuggests a reorientation of “the Gulf” in Gulf studies. The articles of this volume situatethe region within broader global contexts while still honoring its unique characteristics andinternal diversity. Through the use of corpus analysis of a database of 10,003 journalarticles published with a MENA country name in the title, we present a high-level analysisof the development of Gulf studies within the broader context of Middle East studies. Thisis intended as a preliminary step to understanding the development and motivations thatdrive studies about the Gulf, within (and outside of) the context of Middle East Studies.The complexity and diversity of Gulf histories, societies, and culture calls for new anddynamic approaches premised on reorientation. This special issue hence introduces diversescholarly contributions across two lines of inquiry, epistemological and empirical ––engaging, centering, and speaking from within and alongside the region, emphasisingdiversity, both in terms of discipline and the positionality of authors. The contributions inthis issue demonstrate the rich potential of reorienting Gulf studies. They examine topicsranging from gender relations and migration to spatial politics and digital cultures —connecting local realities to transnational flows and global phenomena
Middle East Report, 2023
The problem of digital repression and digital authoritarianism is often framed as something done ... more The problem of digital repression and digital authoritarianism is often framed as something done exclusively by states like China, Iran or Russia. But this framing is a misconception. Authoritarian regimes across the world and US-based Big Tech converge in transnational repression through a combination of content control, surveillance and data collection. Driven by profits, Big Tech platforms often selectively moderate content, amplifying certain narratives while suppressing others based on corporate interests or geopolitical alignments. These tech giants, with their vast reach and influence, exceed or complement the power of states, enabling a broader scope for repression.
Arab Centre's Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies Unit , 2023
This paper presents a longitudinal, deacade-long analysis of over 12,000 mainstream British media... more This paper presents a longitudinal, deacade-long analysis of over 12,000 mainstream British media outlets’ headlines about the Qatar World Cup and the Russia World Cup published since 2010. A corpus analysis, sentiment/tonal analysis and topic analysis were conducted on all headlines. The results show that approximately 1700 British mainstream newspaper headlines mentioning Qatar since 2010 are about the world cup, with two-thirds of those stories being negative: most focusing on reports of poor working conditions for migrant workers, allegations of corruption and bribery, and even Qatar’s alleged support of terrorism. By contrast, out of approximately 11,000 headlines referencing Russia, only 2% of headlines referenced the Russia World Cup. The number of annual stories about the World Cup in Qatar was almost twice that of Russia. These numbers reflect how reporting on Qatar in the past decade has frequently been through the prism of the World Cup and reflects an established trend in Western media to portray sports mega-events in Global South countries negatively. This limited inclusion of Qatar in media discourses outside its role as World Cup host, along with predominantly reductionist and negative representations, conforms with existing studies on coverage of sports events and other large events in the Global South. Longitudinal studies demonstrate other other interesting developments, for example how the Gulf Crisis displaced coverage of the World Cup
The New, Unsustainable Order of Arab Digital Autocracy
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2023
The Middle East has experienced rapid, albeit asymmetrical, digitalization over the past twenty y... more The Middle East has experienced rapid, albeit asymmetrical, digitalization over the past twenty years. Despite the benefits of technology, there is increasing evidence that it is being used to engage in new practices that fundamentally alter the repressive capacity and reach of the state. Here authoritarian states are shifting to emergent totalitarian states.
POMEPS Studies 43: Digital Activism and Authoritarian Adaptation in the Middle East, 2021
Authoritarian regimes and other ‘bad’ actors in the Middle East are using social media for large ... more Authoritarian regimes and other ‘bad’ actors in the Middle East are using social media for large scale deception operations. With little transparency from tech companies and poor regulation around disinformation, monitoring and tracking those operations falls uncomfortably upon journalists, activists and academics.[1] It is therefore necessary to share and discuss emerging techniques of identifying deception with academics across disciplines. It is also important to be transparent about detection methods in an environment where the terms ‘bot’ and ‘troll’ are frequently deployed against those who have opposing views. Being clear about methods of identifying deception can be instructive in a number of ways. Without identifying and acknowledging such deception, sociological studies of social media will inevitably be plagued with ‘corrupted’ data. Scholars using social media data must be adept at filtering out such deception.
Open Information Science, 2022
A product of the global rise of right-wing populism has been a seeming normalisation of gendered ... more A product of the global rise of right-wing populism has been a seeming normalisation of gendered public disinformation, which portrays female public figures as unintelligent, untrustworthy, irrational, and libidinous. Social media has also allowed gendered disinformation to be used in targeted harassment campaigns that seek to intimidate and shame women, reducing their public visibility through psychological violence. Despite this, very few studies on social media involving the Arabic language have explored in detail this phenomenon in the Persian Gulf, despite numerous examples of harassment against women public figures. Since 2017, women journalists critical of regional governments have been subjected to increased attacks online, but none as intense as the attack on Al Jazeera anchor Ghada Oueiss in June 2020. Through keyword analysis, network analysis, and open-source intelligence techniques (OSINT), this paper highlights the intensity and scale of one such attack, identifying the increasing role of malinformation and disinformation in attempting to silence journalists. Such documentation can be useful in demonstrating the volume, velocity, and discursive nature of the attacks threatening women's visibility online. This research also accounts for a potential mechanism of such attacks, which follow a playbook of: 1) leaking information through anonymous accounts, 2) co-opted or loyalist influencers amplifying the attacks, and 3) uncritical local media jumping on the attacks (breakout). From a transformative perspective, it is increasingly important that such attacks are documented, exposed, and analysed to provide evidentiary claims of such abuse. It also highlights the issues of such abuse in authoritarian regimes, who clamp down on online debate, except appear not to do so when the messaging reflects state propaganda.
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2020
Revolutions seldom involve more than one percent of the population. However, in Bahrain, a small ... more Revolutions seldom involve more than one percent of the population. However, in Bahrain, a small island nation with a population of around 570,000, twenty percent of the population took to the streets in February 2011 to demand greater democratic reform, making it “proportionally one of the greatest shows of ‘people power’ in modern history.” The regime's response was disproportionally brutal. Saudi-dominated troops from the Gulf Cooperation Council Peninsula Shield Force were “invited to” or “invaded” Bahrain, depending on who is telling the story. Under cover of the Saudi military, Bahrain's security forces killed dozens of civilians, torturing, maiming, and raping many others. The arsenal of repressive techniques was exhaustive. Belonging also was used as a tool of repression, with many being stripped of their Bahraini citizenship on spurious, terror-related charges.
Global Discourse, 2020
Many of the studies of disinformation tend to reflect transatlantic security concerns, and focus ... more Many of the studies of disinformation tend to reflect transatlantic security concerns, and focus on the activities of Russia and China. There is notably less analysis of disinformation in the Arabic-speaking world and wider MENA region. This article analyses a number of MENA-based COVID-19 disinformation campaigns from 2020, highlighting how COVID-19 disinformation has been instrumentalised by regional actors to attack rivals or bolster the legitimacy of their own regimes. It highlights in particular how certain ‘superspreaders’ of disinformation tend to promote Saudi, Emirate and right wing US foreign policy in the Middle East.
International Journal of Communication, 2019
To address the dual need to examine the weaponization of social media and the nature of non-Weste... more To address the dual need to examine the weaponization of social media and the nature of non-Western propaganda, this article explores the use of Twitter bots in the Gulf crisis that began in 2017. Twitter account-creation dates within hashtag samples are used as a primary indicator for detecting Twitter bots. Following identification, the various modalities of their deployment in the crisis are analyzed. It is argued that bots were used during the crisis primarily to increase negative information and propaganda from the blockading countries toward Qatar. In terms of modalities, this study reveals how bots were used to
manipulate Twitter trends, promote fake news, increase the ranking of anti-Qatar tweets from specific political figures, present the illusion of grassroots Qatari opposition to the Tamim regime, and pollute the information sphere around Qatar, thus amplifying propaganda discourses beyond regional and national news channels.
Communication and the Public, 2017
Social media has permitted activists to subvert censorship and state controlled media. As a resul... more Social media has permitted activists to subvert censorship and state controlled media. As a result, it has become a key medium for experimenting with and/or creating genres previously marginalised or discouraged by the Bahraini government. This article explores aspects of revolutionary cultural production and creative resistance in Bahrain since the uprisings in 2011, and examines the role social media has played in shaping and defining it. Focusing on memes, parody accounts, and the YouTube serial bahārna drama, this paper looks at the rise of political satire online, and the evolution of satirical forms over the progression of the uprising as a dialectic with government policy and propaganda. This paper argues that social media has facilitated the emergence of new forms of satire in Bahrain, and has allowed activists to assert, to both local and global audiences, and in different registers, the integrity of a desired revolutionary aesthetic by confronting state attempts to paint the revolution as schismatic and divisive. As such, 2011 marked a new turn in Bahrain’s satirical heritage. It also argues that the subversive nature of satire makes it a favourable genre with regards to revolutionary cultural production and the public sphere, yet acknowledges that satirical forms, as a response to authoritarian policies, are rarely devoid of the tutelage necessary to make it a truly revolutionary form of counter narrative. [Pre Proof]
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Videos by Marc O Jones
He explains how Middle Eastern governments are increasingly important exporters of disinformation and targets global audiences, from the US to Europe and Asia.”
To drive his point, Dr. Jones describes a first-hand, personal account about a disinformation campaign targeting Nobel Laureate and Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman after her appointment as a member of Facebook’s oversight committee, tasked with helping“democratize the process of moderating content.”
Books by Marc O Jones
https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/digital-authoritarianism-in-the-middle-east/
Through a variety of network analysis techniques, I identified between 2-7,000 fake Twitter accounts spreading Chinese- and English-language propaganda and disinformation since March 2022. Yet, the real number of fake accounts is likely to be much higher. The content includes videos, cartoons, and infographics that amplify a variety of pro-Beijing, pro-Moscow, antidemocratic, and anti-Western narratives. These Twitter accounts match many of the narratives used by fake accounts on Facebook and YouTube.
Awards by Marc O Jones
Books (Edited) by Marc O Jones
The book explores the contentious politics of Bahrain, and charts the way in which a dynamic culture of street protest, a strong moral belief in legitimate democratic demands and creative forms of resistance continue to hamper the efforts of the ruling elite to rebrand itself as a liberal, modernising monarchy. Drawing on powerful testimonies, interviews and conversations from those involved, this broad collection of writings provides a rarely heard voice for the lived experiences of Bahrainis and the research of young scholars studying them. From the trial speech by one of the most prominent political leaders of the uprising, to the evocative prose of an imprisoned poet, the book harnesses the power of storytelling, to lead into scholarly articles that address the themes of space, social movements, postcolonialism, social media, and the role of foreign patrons. Published on the eve of the 2016 bicentenary of British-Bahrain relations, the book in particular focuses on the role of the British government, together showing the depth of historical grievance beyond the sectarian narrative that has come to define the limited reporting of events in the country.
Bahrain’s Uprising provides a powerful insight into the Arab Spring's forgotten front, and will be of lasting value not only to scholars and students of the Middle East, but also to activists seeking to learn from, and build upon, Bahrain history and the uprising's legacy.
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles by Marc O Jones
This forum in Critical Studies in Media Communication marks, what has been, arguably, a century since the birth of modern Propaganda Studies in the 1920s. The flurry of scholarship including Lippmann’s Public Opinion (Citation1922) and Edward Bernays’ Propaganda (Citation1928), was provoked by the rise of fascist and Stalinist propaganda in Europe when mass media was developing. It is sadly fitting that today’s renewal of the discipline accompanies propaganda’s service to resurgent authoritarianism. We thus envisioned this forum to consider what we have learned from this century of propaganda scholarship and practice, and indeed what we still need to learn to challenge its authoritarian utility. Therefore we ask “whither Propaganda Studies?” as we hurtle into its digital future.
manipulate Twitter trends, promote fake news, increase the ranking of anti-Qatar tweets from specific political figures, present the illusion of grassroots Qatari opposition to the Tamim regime, and pollute the information sphere around Qatar, thus amplifying propaganda discourses beyond regional and national news channels.