Hassan Bashir; Amir Reza Tamaddon; Amin Mirshekari Soleimani
Abstract
With the increasing use of new communication technologies, public opinion management tools have also undergone fundamental changes; both in terms of method and theoretical foundations, ...
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With the increasing use of new communication technologies, public opinion management tools have also undergone fundamental changes; both in terms of method and theoretical foundations, there have been developments in the field of public opinion management that double the need to review and develop the theoretical literature of the past. What is now being referred to as a new way of managing public opinion in recent years, and especially after the 2016 US election, is the issue of "social manipulation". The authors believe that Iran is one of the countries that is exposed to hostile social manipulation by regional and supra-regional powers due to its special communication position. To this end, with the framework of hostile social manipulation, the cyber actions of Saudi Arabia against the Islamic Republic of Iran have been studied. For the present study, more than 900,000 data related to Iran in Arabic were extracted by Twitter from the social network Twitter until 2021 & 2022 years; Then, using the network analysis method, the activity of Saudi users has been specially studied. The results of the study show that Saudi Arabia, with its hostile social manipulation techniques, especially by investing in cyber tools, seeks to discredit, destabilize, weaken, and sometimes promote specific groups and institutions that are important to the country's competitive power.
