Cultural Communities as a Foundation for Global Influence Operations The K-Pop Community and Operation Guardian of the Walls

Key Findings:

The researchers explore the notion of social media as a new public sphere, and as an arena for socio-cultural conflict and strategic campaigns waged for emotional and intellectual impact. They specifically examine the Korean pop community (also known as K-Pop) for both:

A) Its classification as a dispersed digital tribe that promotes cultural connectivity and identity beyond geographic, ethnic, and religious boundaries 

B) Its engagements in a cognitive campaign to promote pro-Palestinian messages, including the distribution of anti-Israel content and an attempt to harm social media companies. 

The K-Pop community in particular is actively involved in political affairs, and demonstrates activism, decentralized organization, and the ability to channel the group toward risky behavior in the digital space. Examples of K-Pop community actions include effective campaigns to promote artists, shut down hashtags, and even influence politics, such as in the George Floyd protests and Donald Trump's campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

The efficacy of this mass organization towards action provides valuable insight into the exploding role of social media in facilitating discussion (both literate and illiterate) within modern society — particularly identifiable as a phenomenon during and after Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021.

The K-Pop community has a specific way of conducting influence campaigns, which includes various tactics such as fundraising, knowledge sharing, hierarchy, use of non-authentic users (such as bots or avatars), denial of service attacks (DDoS) which mobilize massive numbers of digital platform users to act in concert and cause digital systems to become overloaded and collapse, and the use of hashtags as a tool for directing discourse.

Next-Dim identified and analyzed Twitter activity connected to Operation Guardian of the Walls. Unusual activity patterns were detected during the first days of the operation. Such unusual patterns and structures may attest to “inorganic” activity, indicating the possibility of an organized and timed campaign against Israel. The campaign had two aims: 

1.  Increasing exposure to pro-Palestinian messages
2.  Massively reducing the ratings of social media in app stores with the aim of influencing their decisions. 

At the start of Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021, pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel content was spread on Twitter by users identified as Palestinians. Notably, the campaign did not achieve the desired impact nor did it become very popular until a significant turning point — when the K-Pop community rallied for the Palestinian call. This change took place when a Malaysian influencer (username Ad-Dien) who is identified with K-Pop shared the Palestinian campaign, leading to its broad distribution among many users affiliated with this community. 

The K-Pop community then began amplifying the campaign and significantly increased its spread in an organized and methodical fashion. The campaign published anti-Israel content and used visual means (graphic photos) aimed at causing shock and emotional responses. These messages were accompanied by hashtags that became very popular and contributed to campaign exposure among broad publics of Twitter users. For example, the community used the hashtags #SaveSheikhJarrah and #FreePalestine, which were among the most active and popular hashtags during the course of Operation Guardian of the Walls. 

As a result, the anti-Israel campaign mushroomed and reached tens of millions of users, with a striking figure of seven out of ten central accounts involved in mass distribution of the campaign’s content affiliated with the K-Pop community. It is wort noting that the pro-Palestinian content promoted was markedly different in nature from the content that K-Pop community members typically share. 

The K-Pop community's significant number of users, politically aware young people, and affiliation with other identities make it especially attractive and effective for cognitive campaigns around the world. It is therefore crucial to be familiar with the modus operandi used by these campaigns — especially in the context of the ongoing intellectual and emotional campaign about Israel on social media.