In late June 2025, X saw a surge of coordinated digital campaigns targeting Egyptian Minister of Transport Kamel El Wazir (Wazir being also the word meaning “Minister” in Arabic) on the hashtag “#كامل_الوزير” (Kamel El Wazir) and associated sub-hashtags. Over 19,000 posts were generated within a week, including both strong criticism and vigorous defense of the minister.

The initial findings indicated that digital activity around the hashtag #كامل_الوزير (Kamel El Wazir) began prior to the incident, with the first posts recorded on June 19, 2025, at a limited volume of fewer than ten posts per day until June 21. On June 22, activity increased notably, reaching 225 posts, and then rose further to 395 posts the following day.

The peak of activity occurred on June 26, 2025, immediately after news of the Delta road accident spread. Posts surpassed 5,000 on that single day, reflecting the level of public outrage. Simultaneously, the appearance of numerous low-reach, low-influence accounts engaging in high-volume posting to amplify the hashtag suggested the initiation of coordinated efforts.

While the #كامل_الوزير_قاتل (Kamel El Wazir is a Killer) campaign effectively began on June 28 with only a handful of posts, it quickly reached a modest peak on June 30, recording around 120 posts. The content was characterized by direct accusations and politically charged, provocative language, with phrases such as “The girls’ blood is on the minister’s hands” or “A killer in a suit and tie.”

Notably, most of these posts originated from new or semi-dormant accounts, yet the average engagement per tweet reached 49 interactions — a relatively high figure given the size of the participating accounts. This pattern strengthens the likelihood of automated or semi-automated amplification.

In response a pro-minister campaign was launched on July 1 under the hashtags #ادعم_كامل_الوزير (Support Kamel El Wazir) and #إنجازات_كامل_الوزير (Kamel El Wazir’s Achievements) after public debate had relatively subsided. This timing suggests a coordinated intervention aimed at reshaping public opinion and reinforcing the minister’s image two days after the peak of criticism. The campaign generated only 473 posts, but their temporal distribution and the repeated prominence of certain accounts (such as @aborwanalp11056) indicate an attempt to deliberately steer the narrative, rather than a spontaneous show of support.

In terms of engagement patterns, the proportion of original posts in any of the three hashtags did not exceed 7%, indicating that the debate appeared interactive on the surface but was in practice heavily repetitive.

In both the negative and positive campaigns, the majority of engagement came in the form of reposts of specific tweets, with a clear absence of organic, free-flowing comments. This strongly reinforces the hypothesis of coordinated activity rather than genuine public discussion.

Sentiment Analysis

The analysis indicates that roughly 60% of the activity around the hashtag #كامل_الوزير (Kamel El Wazir) carried explicitly negative sentiment, compared to a very small share of positive engagement.

In contrast, the #كامل_الوزير_قاتل (Kamel El Wazir is a Killer) campaign appeared more intense in terms of content but smaller in volume. Its sentiment distribution was approximately 45.5% negative and 53.5% neutral, with only four posts carrying a positive tone, which were likely sarcastic or played on irony.

Surprisingly, the distribution of posts on the supporting campaign showed that positive content constituted only 33% (158 posts), significantly outnumbered by 227 negative posts. This indicates that critics engaged with the hashtags that were originally intended to defend the minister and repurposed them for criticism and mockery.

At the start of activity on June 19, 2025, most posts were news-related or neutral. However, by June 23–24, negative content began to dominate gradually. The peak of negative engagement was on June 26, coinciding with public anger and the emergence of repetitive posts directly accusing the minister of negligence or responsibility for the “bloodshed on the roads.” In contrast, positive posts did not begin to appear until after June 30, aligning with the campaign that adopted the narrative of the “minister as a fighter.”

Negative posts prominently featured critical terms such as: “killer,” “corruption,” “blood on the asphalt,” “the girls’ blood,” “the minister is responsible,” and “immediate dismissal.”

On the supportive side, terms promoting the minister’s alleged achievements and dedication to work appeared, such as: “fighter,” “7,000 km of roads built,” “railway development,” and “the President’s vision.”

Some posts also used sarcastic expressions like: “a killer but an achiever,” which influenced the interaction around the hashtag defending Kamel El Wazir.

Geographic analysis

The majority of posts associated with the hashtag “Kamel El Wazir” originated in Egypt. However, what stood out was the active participation of accounts based in the Gulf and the West, reflecting the overlap of local discourse with regional — and possibly international — contexts.

A geographic distribution analysis showed that Egypt clearly led participation in the discussion around Kamel El Wazir, recording 3,123 posts out of the total posts under the main hashtag. This was followed by Saudi Arabia with 706 posts, Qatar with 572, the United States with 395, and the United Kingdom with 215 posts.

In contrast, the “Kamel El Wazir is a Killer” campaign recorded lower levels of participation, but its distribution across countries such as Poland, Australia, and Tunisia was notable. This may suggest the use of external tools or VPNs to obscure geographic location.

The positive campaign “Support Kamel El Wazir appeared to be more localized, with 29% of the posts coming from Egypt alone (139 out of 473). This was followed by participation from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Oman, reflecting Gulf-based engagement in support of the Egyptian regime.

Narrative Structure Analysis

The discourses surrounding the hashtag Kamel El Wazir can be divided into three main competing narratives seeking to shape public perception. Foremost among them is  messaging that holds the minister directly responsible for the incident. This narrative repeatedly used stark expressions such as “killer,” “the girls’ blood,” “blood on the asphalt,” and “immediate dismissal.”

In contrast, an entirely opposing discourse emerged, built around glorifying Kamel El Wazir as a “fighter” who managed to accomplish major projects such as “7,000 km of roads.” This narrative repeatedly invoked patriotic and political phrases like “the President’s vision” and “long live Egypt.” It placed strong emphasis on large figures and achievements to project an image of competence, while also highlighting the minister’s military background and associated discipline—an explicit attempt to counter the accusations directed at him.

The third discourse was a sarcastic one, weaving itself between the supportive and opposing hashtags. It relied on rephrasing expressions such as “a killer, but an achiever” or raising ironic questions about “the truth about these so-called achievements on the ground.” Accounts employing this discourse typically had large followings, which allowed their satirical posts to spread more widely compared to the more coordinated content.

This was evident in specific examples, such as a post by account @ERC_egy on June 26, which directly linked the minister’s responsibility to the girls’ tragic deaths. Likewise, account @msh16999 stood out on June 28 with a post describing the minister as a “killer in a tie” — arguably the sharpest among the contributions.

On the other hand, account @aborwanalp11056 on July 1 attempted to counter these accusations by praising the minister and emphasizing what it described as his tangible achievements. On July 2, account @ahmedamara37 blended support with sarcasm through a question about the actual quality of the much-touted roads.

By delving deeper into the discourse overall, the critical narrative clearly dominated, accounting for nearly half of the posts, while the supportive narrative represented a much smaller share.

Network analysis

The breakdown of the network structure of the #كامل_الوزير (Kamel El Wazir) campaign reveals a clear communication pattern based on the hub-and-spoke model, where the publishing process revolves around a limited group of accounts responsible for launching the core content, while dozens of other accounts simply retweet or replicate it verbatim. This model reflects a high degree of centralization, which is one of the strongest indicators of pre-coordination in orchestrated digital campaigns.

In the #كامل_الوزير (Kamel El Wazir) hashtag, the most prominent of these hub accounts was @mouradaly, which retweeted from 513 original posts during the monitoring period— a number that cannot reasonably be explained as ordinary individual behavior.

Alongside it, accounts such as @roowith7 with 89 posts, @jwrj444152, and @pewvfb9qameafph made an appearance. These accounts share common traits of being low-engagement and focusing heavily on repeating messages without alteration—raising the likelihood that they are part of a semi-automated or centrally directed network.

When applying the Louvain algorithm to analyze sub-communities within the retweet network, three main network clusters with clear internal cohesion emerged.

The first represents the pro-Minister community, centered around the account @aborwanalp11056, which alone recorded 41 posts within the #ادعم_كامل_الوزير (Support Kamel El Wazir) campaign. This cluster displayed a repetitive pattern, relying on the use of nearly identical phrases with only slight changes in word order—seemingly an attempt to bypass algorithms designed to detect duplication.

The second community revolved around accounts driving the negative campaign, most notably @msh16999, which emerged as a key source of posts using #كامل_الوزير_قاتل (Kamel El Wazir is a Killer) in a distinctly critical tone. Notably, this group operated in specific time waves and then disappeared, reinforcing the hypothesis that it was activated for a targeted task before going inactive.

The third community, by contrast, was the largest in size and comprised accounts associated with the general hashtag #كامل_الوزير (Kamel El Wazir). It was characterized by high repetition and diverse content, but unlike the previous clusters, it did not rely on a fixed set of accounts reposting identical messages in close succession—indicating a looser and more organic structure.

Influencing accounts

Examination of the most active accounts shows that the network landscape is driven by four main actors, each leaving a distinct footprint that suggests a functional role rather than ordinary interaction.

At the forefront is the account @mouradaly, with nearly 70,000 followers. Within just two weeks, it pumped out dozens of posts, 96% of which were repetitive replies to others’ tweets in almost the exact same phrasing, while it published only 18 original posts.

The massive volume of brief, uniform replies, contrasted with the scarcity of new content, suggests that the account functions as an automated amplification engine to propel the hashtag into "trending" sections, rather than a genuine hub for human interaction.

Alongside it is @roowith7, with a total of 89 posts during the monitoring period, despite an average reach that barely exceeds a few dozen views. This gap between a very limited audience and intensive posting is one of the hallmarks of “spoke” accounts, which receive material from a central hub and redistribute it without interruption. Notably, nearly half of this account’s content consists of very short original posts — rarely longer than a single line — in which phrases such as “نزيف الأسفلت” (bleeding on the asphalt) and “إهمال الوزير” (the minister’s negligence) recur almost verbatim. This pattern deepens suspicions that the account relies on pre-designed templates or automated posting scripts.

On the other side, @msh16999 led the accusatory campaign under the hashtag #كامل_الوزير_قاتل (Kamel El Wazir is a Killer). The account has barely 150 followers, yet it posted 47 times within three days, most of them replies to local news sources aimed at injecting direct accusations into the flood of comments. Notably, the account does not post about anything outside this topic—no sports opinions, no entertainment, not even casual conversations—as if it was designed exclusively for this task, resembling a "field account" that is activated when needed and then goes silent.

On the defensive side, the effort relied mainly on @aborwanalp11056, who repeated 41 posts, most of them beginning with a fixed formula consisting of the hashtag itself and accompanying hashtags. Although the account’s owner has fewer than a thousand followers, it was used for amplification in an attempt to counter the wave of anger. Analysis of posting times shows that the account’s activity peaked after midnight Cairo time, suggesting either automated scheduling or a team rotating to manage the account outside Egypt’s usual peak hours.

The behavior of these four accounts reveals a similar pattern: posting intensity disproportionate to audience size, an almost complete absence of natural human interaction, and exclusive dedication to a single narrative—whether accusatory or celebratory. This pattern gives the network a coordinated character and confirms that the dominant discourse was not the product of organic engagement, but was rathe] carefully orchestrated through accounts designed specifically to push the narrative in the desired direction.