Israel-Hamas War on X: A Case Study of Coordinated Campaigns and Information Integrity
For social media platforms and researchers, this study provides a nuanced understanding of coordinated campaigns during conflicts, showing that not all coordination is malicious and that moderation should focus on content-specific footprints rather than amplification alone.
This paper analyzes 4.5 million tweets during the 2023 Israel-Hamas War, identifying 11 coordinated groups involving 541 accounts. It finds that coordinated campaigns use low-complexity tactics like retweet amplification, and that misleading claims are concentrated in only three groups, while other groups engage in advocacy or humanitarian mobilization. Targeting prolific spreaders of misleading content is effective for moderation, but targeting general amplifiers is not.
Coordinated campaigns on social media play a critical role in shaping crisis information environments, particularly during the onset of conflicts when uncertainty is high and verified information is scarce. We study the interplay between coordinated campaigns and information integrity through a case study of the 2023 Israel-Hamas War on Twitter (X). We analyze 4.5~million tweets and employ established coordination detection methods to identify 11 coordinated groups involving 541 accounts. We characterize these groups through a multimodal analysis that includes topics, account amplification, toxicity, emotional tone, visual themes, and misleading claims. Our analysis reveal that coordinated campaigns rely predominantly on low-complexity tactics, such as retweet amplification and copy-paste diffusion, and promote distinct narratives consistent with a fragmented manipulation landscape, without centralized control. Widely amplified misleading claims concentrate within just three of the identified coordinated groups; the remaining groups primarily engage in advocacy, religious solidarity, or humanitarian mobilization. Claim-level integrity, toxicity, and emotional signals are mutually uncorrelated: no single behavioral signal is a reliable proxy for the others. Targeting the most prolific spreaders of misleading content for moderation would be effective in reducing such content. However, targeting prolific amplifiers in general would not achieve the same mitigation effect. These findings suggest that evaluating coordination structures jointly with their specific content footprints is needed to effectively prioritize moderation interventions.