Document Type : .

Authors

• Hamid Abdollahyan ¹
• Amirali Tafreshi ²
• Mehri Bahar ²

¹ Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran

² Department of Communication, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran

Abstract

The research objective is to know the political geography of cyber forces in Persian Twitter and measure their influence in the discussion network during the Corona virus. The question of the research is: Is the fake news published by cyber forces effective during the Corona period and has it been highlighted on Persian Twitter? In this regard, more than four million tweets have been extracted and analyzed and interpreted. By identifying cyber forces in 11 clusters and analyzing their network, the prominent presence and influence of cyber and fake forces in the clusters: monarchists, fundamentalists, the MKO, Irfan-Halkha, the cluster of supporters of Imam Mahdi, and the cluster of the oppositions were determined. The results show that with the presence of 80% of cyber forces, it is generally identified as fake and the other cluster is in a critical situation with the presence of more than 40% of these forces. In sum, according to the findings of this research and according to the network centrality indicators, cyber and fake forces have penetrated to the depth and core of each cluster in almost all clusters, and we are facing a public domain infected with fake cyber forces in Persian Twitter.

Keywords

• fake news
• cyber forces
• Twitter
• impact
• network analysis
• Corona