Comparing Taliban Social Media Usage by Language: Who's Speaking and What's Being Said

Abstract

We studied Taliban use of social media messaging to gain insight regarding key personnel, policies, and themes and to examine whether the media messaging across various regional languages was similar or different. We assessed that understanding any differences in messaging between foreign and domestic audiences would increase understanding of Taliban policies and policymaking. Our study focused on Twitter, which is the most broadly used social media platform to publicize news and policy by Taliban leaders and spokesmen and provided us with the largest and most manipulable database to support our research. Our team amassed a large collection of tweets for analysis spanning the period from the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021 to April 2022. These tweets are captured in a database for further analysis and review.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 27, 2023
Accession Number
AD1199986

Entities

People

  • Bradley M. Knopp
  • Elmo C. Jr Wright
  • Jon Niewijk
  • Zohan H. Tariq

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Afghanistan
  • Commerce
  • Economic Policy
  • Employment
  • European Union
  • Foreign Aid
  • Governments
  • Health Services
  • Human Rights
  • Humanitarian Assistance
  • Intergovernmental Organizations
  • International Law
  • International Organizations
  • International Relations
  • Medical Personnel
  • Money
  • National Security
  • Public Health
  • Social Media
  • Terrorism
  • Terrorists
  • United States

Readers

  • Agent-Based Social Robotics and Mobile-Assisted Learning in Virtual Environments.
  • Economics
  • Strategic Security Studies