By NILESH CHRISTOPHER / Rest of World
Under an anonymous Twitter handle, @thehawkeyex has been on a mission to expose what they perceive as “anti-India” forces — mostly critics of the Hindu nationalist ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), including prominent journalists and media outlets. The handle frequently publishes threads citing news articles and other public documents as evidence of alleged misappropriation of funds or tax evasion.
The handle describes its work as open-source intelligence (OSINT), with a following of nearly 100,000. But experts say it’s part of a new wave of partisan content that uses the image of OSINT to appear unbiased.
Besides @thehawkeyex, anonymous self-described OSINT accounts such as @AgentVinod03, @OsintUpdates, and @OSINTWa_com claim to be frontline warriors in support of the Indian government. Most of their tweets have a clear right-of-center ideological leaning, which makes any and all critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi — including journalists — “anti-India” to them. “We try to burst the Anti India Propaganda by Anti National Organizations. We expose the links and their funding pattern,” reads the mission statement of @AgentVinod03.
Social media researchers who analyzed the output of some of these accounts, on Rest of World’s request, found these handles to be part of the larger right-wing influence operations piggybacking on the rise of OSINT culture, and even co-opting it for narrative building. These Twitter accounts have garnered thousands of followers over the past year, including prominent right-wing politicians and intellectuals. A number of the accounts operate donation pages, where well-wishers can send funds to support their work.
“A majority of the threads I’ve seen from these accounts are just regurgitation of historical facts or relations, or a partial presentation of what is already out there in the public. And it’s painted as path-breaking in the vocabulary,” said a researcher at the London School of Economics (LSE) who is working on social media platforms and majoritarian violence in India. They wanted to remain anonymous because their fieldwork is in sensitive areas, where they have to keep a low profile.
Seemingly to avoid being flagged by platform moderators, @thehawkeyex obscures highly charged words, using special characters: terr0r!st, Roh!ngya, gen0c!de, k!ll!ing. By discrediting fact-checking organizations or Bollywood actors, these motivated accounts seek engagement over truth, and the messaging elicits an emotional response. “I think it was @[the]hawkeyex, where every tweet starts with ‘[EXPOSED],’ for instance,” the LSE researcher said. “That vocabulary makes it feel like these people are trying to hide it from you, and somehow we have uncovered it.”
This story was originally published in restofworld.org . Read the full story here