Wissam Rabihat, the candidate from the "Islamic Action Front" party in Jordan, has been subjected to a coordinated smear campaign led by a network of fake accounts just days before voting for the parliamentary elections is set to begin.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Amid the Jordanian parliamentary elections, a video circulated on social media showing the winning candidate from Amman's Second District, representing the "Islamic Action Front" party, Wissam Al Rabihat, messing up the contents of a store. The footage does not reveal what happened before or after the incident. The video, shared on "X" on September 2, 2024, was accompanied by the hashtag #Brotherhood_Candidate_The_Thug. The hashtag quickly became a trending topic in Jordan. It featured negative comments about Al Rabihat and attacks on the "Islamic Action Front."
The hashtag generated 1,556 posts, viewed around 500,000 times, with an estimated additional reach of 1.05 million potential views. The posts garnered 5,333 interactions, including likes, replies, comments, and shares, according to statistics from Meltwater, a leading social media analysis tool.


Activity periods of the hashtag  #Brotherhood_Candidate_The_Thug – Meltwater

Al Rabihat’s win was part of the surprising victory of the Islamic Action Front which is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. The party ranked first among the ten winning parties in the general district, with a total of 464,000 votes out of 1.6 million.

Who influenced the hashtag?

Accounts known for supporting official government positions played a role in promoting the hashtag #Brotherhood_Candidate_The_Thug. Some of these accounts feature Jordanian flags or pictures of King Abdullah II or images from the internet on their "X" profiles. Among them are individuals who identify themselves as social influencers, lawyers, or media figures, while other accounts provide no such details. Most accounts involved in the campaign have tens of thousands of followers, with some featuring the paid blue verification marks.

Upon examining the content of these accounts, a number of observations can be made. They post positive tweets about Jordan's king, government, and security and intelligence agencies, while harshly criticizing Hamas and its leaders, as well as the Islamic Action Front. After three Israelis were shot dead by Jordanian truck driver Maher Al Jazi near the King Hussein Bridge (Allenby Bridge) in the occupied West Bank, some of the accounts participating in the campaign launched severe criticisms against Hamas and those who expressed approval of the incident. They referred to them as "a reckless and naive" and described the attack as an attempt to "reduce Jordan's political, diplomatic, and humanitarian role."

These accounts had previously been active on other pro-government hashtags, such as: "#Jordan_Stronger_Today, #Jordan_Supports_Palestine, #Only_the_ballot_box_for you."

The campaign accounts support the National Charter Party, which came in second in the general district elections, following the Islamic Action Front, having secured around 93,000 votes. On August 26, these campaign accounts were among 192 active accounts promoting the hashtag #National_Charter_Party_8, which gathered over 2,000 posts. The number "8" refers to the "national list" that ran in the elections under the party's name, which is seen as being close to the government. The National Charter Party was founded in 2022 and is led by political figures who were previously high-ranking government officials or former military officers.

 

Old Video, Fake Accounts, and Repetitive Content

The campaign accounts circulated an old, low-quality video captured by a surveillance camera, accompanied by a fixed caption claiming that the footage showed the Islamic Action Front candidate, Wissam Al Rabihat, attacking a store with others, presenting it as a recent event. Residents from the Tafilah, the largest neighborhood in Amman where Al Rabihat lives, confirmed that the video was authentic but was from a tribal dispute that occurred six years ago, which had been resolved and was unrelated to the current election. The video was shared alongside comments expressing concern about voting for the Islamic Action Front representative, labeling him a "thug."

Not all of the 822 campaign accounts consistently engage with public issues in Jordan. Instead, they occasionally hide behind posts featuring quotes, images, romantic phrases, and light content. This has become a common tactic for fake accounts used to run coordinated online campaigns across the Arab region. The purpose is to mask the true activities of these accounts, creating a false impression of diverse content and giving them a more human-like appearance.

According to Meltwater statistics, 275 posts originated from Jordan using the hashtag #Brotherhood_candidate_the_thug, while 972 posts came from unknown locations as the account profiles lack geographical data. This is also an indicator of coordinated activity by fake accounts. Additionally, we observed that these accounts form a network among themselves; they follow each other, exchange responses, and post similar content.