#Digital_Midnight_Battle

The current Gulf crisis and the blockade of Qatar by Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain mark a significant turn in the regional diplomatic, economic and social relationships. Cyber warfare including bots and the alleged hack of the Qatari News Agency play a central role in the Qatar crisis in June 2017. It started when the (QNA) website transmitted a false report about emir's speech. Then, it was the time to mislead people by spreading fake news to discredit Doha. It was a cyber battle, but it had a complete plan to legitimise the boycott and try to isolate Qatar. Twitter, specifically, has a significant role in the disinformation campaign as four days before the hacking a trending hashtag claimed that Qatar is the treasury of terrorism (Jones, 2017). This claim has continued by using Twitter bots which are automated accounts attempt to manipulate public opinion by artificially boosting the popularity of social media posts. The primary purpose of these bots is to legitimise the propaganda and shape the public opinion in a way that serves (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain) agendas.

On the other hand, Qatar-based media outlets such as Qatar-TV and Al Jazeera have been published articles and TV- programs daily to show the real story. Also, at the Qatar side, hashtags "Tamim The Glorious" and "Qatar Is Not Alone" appeared on Twitter's homepage in the Gulf, supposedly showing they were popular sentiments for the region's social media users. For instance, "Tamim al Majd" becomes a patriotic icon that unifies people who live in Qatar and defend the massive propaganda on Twitter and the ground.