Our analysis concludes that there was an organized campaign to shape and prepare the virtual climate before the Egyptian Parliament delegated President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. The president did not directly request this delegation in his statements, but online pages and forums supportive of him interpreted the matter in this way. The nature and timing of the campaign do not suggest that its appearance was spontaneous, as it came shortly after the president made statements in the presence of the German Chancellor.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi appeared alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in a press conference in Cairo, during which the former hinted at possible protests against Israeli proposals to relocate Palestinians to Sinai, and in support of the government's stance on the ongoing crisis in Gaza. El-Sisi stated, "If necessary, I will ask the Egyptian people to express their rejection of this idea, and you will see millions of Egyptians expressing their rejection [of relocating Palestinians to Sinai] and supporting the Egyptian position on this matter."

El-Sisi made his statement at 11 a.m. Cairo time. Some social media pages (largely seen as part of the presidential propaganda machinery) immediately circulated these words as a "delegation formula." Media outlets owned by “sovereign bureaus” also disseminated the statement, accompanied by hashtags conveying the same message. This coordinated activity preceded the parliament's announcement, the following Thursday, authorizing the president to take the necessary "measures to protect national security."

The first calls for "delegating" El-Sisi appeared at 1 p.m., two hours after the conference. One of the prominent calls came from the Facebook page Awareness is Light, a propaganda pages owned by YouTuber Mohamed Nour, and followed by over a million people. He has other accounts on social media platforms.

In a comment accompanied by a live broadcast, Nour wrote "Sisi declares war. Breaking: Sisi requests popular authorization to fight Israel." About 380 thousand people watched the broadcast. It is worth noting that Nour usually uses sensational headlines to attract the audience to watch video clips and live broadcasts.

Nour began the broadcast by saying that this is the second time the president requests delegation. "The president says there is a possibility that he will ask the Egyptian people to delegate him to represent their opinion...The president says there are 105 million Egyptians, and he may ask them to delegate him by coming out in millions to support the state in its decisions aimed at protecting Egyptian national security and the Palestinian cause."

Upon concluding the live broadcast, Nour posted a template for delegating the president. He wrote: "Anyone ready should come down to delegate the President, the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, write a comment, and share the video.. We are all now ready soldiers to move to protect our country."

Around 4:00 pm, Al-Watan newspaper, which is owned by the ‘Sovereign Bureau’s’ company United Media Services, published posters with the same promotional format that Mohamed Nour posted on his page. The newspaper also published similar posters in foreign languages, stating: "In all languages of the world.. Egyptians delegate Sisi in protecting Egypt and the peace process."

In what appears to be an orchestrated effort, another YouTuber supportive of the president emerged two hours after Nour's broadcast. Ahmed Mubarak used the same phrases, and titled his live broadcast: "Breaking:! Sisi declares war! and requests a delegation from the public to terminate the peace treaty, and for the Egyptian army to enter to protect Gaza and Sinai!" Mubarak also left a delegation template in the comments.

On Saturday, coinciding with the arrival of the first shipment of aid to the Gaza Strip, Nour, Mubarak, and Mahmoud Tolba appeared together in a photo at the Rafah Crossing. Tolba had previously engaged in verbal exchanges with Khaled Dawoud, a journalist and politician who opposes Sisi, during the national dialogue. All three appeared in the tours of the Egyptian president. The trio of YouTubers are among the most prominent figures active in the propaganda machinery on social networks.

Mobilization and Exaggeration

During the campaign to advocate delegating the president, the hashtag #105_Millions_Delegate_Sisi appeared, echoing the president’s call during his press conference with Scholz. Facebook recorded the first appearance of the hashtag at 2:11 PM on Wednesday, by the YouTuber Mahmoud Khalil, according to the Crowd Tangle tool. At that time, Khalil appeared in a video, contributing, like other YouTubers, to amplifying Sisi's statements and calling for his authorization.

On Facebook, there were 245 posts with the hashtag #105_Millions_Delegate_Sisi, garnering 5564 interactions, according to Crowd Tangle. The tool does not include statistics for posts published on personal accounts but conducts a scan only for pages and groups. 

Facebook pages and groups played a prominent role in promoting the hashtag and spreading it to other platforms, such as Twitter. These pages include Egyptian Alliance for Social Media, Al-Dostour Newspaper, National Security, Egyptian Army, "Hawks of Egyptian Intelligence, Achievements of Leader Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, and We are all the Egyptian Army. These pages used the same hashtag and promoted demonstrations and "mass mobilization" last Friday in "authorized gathering areas in all governorates" to express "support for the state and political leadership in its historical positions."

These authorized gathering areas witness large gatherings. Additionally, solidarity protests emerged, distancing themselves from the mainstream protests. They used slogans including "This protest is really not an delegation for anyone." One of these protests was notably large, reaching Tahrir Square – not on the list of authorized protest locations – in a rare occurrence since 2013. Security forces dispersed the protest and arrested dozens who participated. In contrast, the protests carrying pictures of the president and the flags of Egypt and Palestine did not witness any arrests.

The locations of these protests were not officially announced, but this list gained significant popularity through these virtual assemblies.

Moving to Twitter

While newspapers and YouTubers' pages launched the initial push to promote the president's delegation, Twitter's X Platform seemed to pick up the second phase of the mobilization campaign for the same purpose.

Bassem Bakheet, who refers to himself as "The Maestro" is one of the prominent figures in launching propaganda campaigns in Egypt. At 3:29 PM, he announced the wave of tweets with the hashtag #105_Millions_Delegate_Sisi. He posted a tweet containing the hashtag and the delegation template that appeared on the YouTubers' pages on Facebook.

In a later tweet, addressed to his affiliated accounts, he stated that it is "the official hashtag, guys, let's respond to the call." Bassem urged his followers to "retweet and roll it worldwide," referring to the retweeting mechanism as one of the coordinated non-spontaneous methods to amplify hashtags until they appear in the trending list or become widely circulated on Twitter.

Meltwater statistics echoed Bassem’s call. The leading internet content analysis platform shows that retweets or reposts formed the highest proportion in terms of post quality using the hashtag. Retweets accounted for 48.7% of the total posts, followed by replies (32%). It was observed that some accounts were posting repetitive and simple tweets containing only the hashtag in response to campaign posts.

Subsequent tweets by The Maestro indicated that the hashtag entered the trending list at 4:36 PM and reached the top with a total of 3,172 tweets by 6:29 PM on Wednesday, October 18. This was a record rate in less than 3 hours, meaning there were 1,057 tweets every hour or 17 tweets per minute.

Since its appearance until the 24th of October, the hashtag has generated 38,404 tweets from 14,508 accounts, with more than 5 million impressions and a potential reach of over 10 million accounts, according to Meltwater.

The hashtag’s activity times – Meltwater

Other accounts played a prominent role in amplifying the hashtag, especially those with tens of thousands of followers. Among them, @ElDostorEgypt account, belonging to El Dostor newspaper, posted 58 tweets. Abdalwahed Ashour, former editor-in-chief of the Middle East News Agency, shared 47 tweets under his account @AA_Ashour. Dandrawi El Hawary, the executive editor of Al Youm Al Sabaa newspaper, posted 10 retweets, and Mohamed El Desouki, the social media manager at Gate News and the owner of the propaganda account (Achievements of Egypt @engazatmasr2020), shared 4 tweets.

Among the most active accounts were _SOLA_a6 (619 tweets), A3A3A3A123 (259 tweets), Esll7970Gladii (514 tweets), and ClosedHeart20 (219 tweets). These accounts are interconnected and have previously participated in propaganda campaigns supporting the government and the president, as well as in campaigns attacking critics.

According to Meltwater, there were more than 23,000 tweets from accounts with unknown geographical locations, while 10,000 tweets originated from accounts within Egypt. Following in order were Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Italy, each with hundreds of tweets.

Meanwhile, even before The Maestro's tweets, the parliamentarian and media personality Mustafa Bakry hinted on the X Platform that the House of Representatives was leaning towards  delegating Sisi. Later, other media figures, including Ahmed Moussa, followed suit.

Simultaneously, the Egyptian Parties Alliance, a coalition of 42 parties known for supporting the president and lacking significant political influence, issued a statement delegating Sisi. News sites affiliated with the government and sovereign entities also shed light on the delegation hashtag. These included Al-Youm Al-Sabea, Al-Jomhur, Mubtada, and MUSTAQBAL Watan News.

After hours of buzz and mobilization on social media, news sites reported that both chambers of the Egyptian Parliament delegated Sisi, "to take all measures he deems to stand by our brethren in Palestine and protect Egyptian and Arab national security."

Our analysis concludes that there was an organized campaign to shape and prepare the virtual climate before the Egyptian Parliament delegated President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. The president did not directly request this delegation in his statements, but online pages and forums supportive of him interpreted the matter in this way. The nature and timing of the campaign do not suggest that its appearance was spontaneous, as it came shortly after the president made statements in the presence of the German Chancellor.

The consecutive appearances and timing of the YouTuber group in live broadcasts or video clips on October 18th may indicate that the campaign was organized even before Sisi made his statements. The YouTubers were keen on promoting and disseminating the unified "delegation template" for the president, and some media outlets contributed to its promotion in various languages.

In a later stage, active groups on Facebook and Twitter took on the task of pushing the hashtag #105_Millions_Delegate_Sisi to the top of the list of the most trending topics in a short time, through organized efforts resulting in over 3,000 tweets. The total number of posts on the X Platform exceeded 38,000.