Jose M. Macias III and Nico Vacca
The United States and Israel have made battlefield gains in their conflict against Iran, but the United States is struggling to counter Iranian propaganda. Operational successes have removed Iran’s authoritarian supreme leader, dismantled its defense leadership apparatus, and degraded its missile capabilities. However, the opportunity cost of military success for the United States is the loss of ground in the information war for the hearts and minds of American audiences and Western audiences more broadly. While Iran is losing on the battlefield, it is competing effectively in the information space through an aggressive, multiplatform disinformation campaign.
Analysis by the Futures Lab of more than 9,000 Bluesky Social posts finds that messages seemingly designed to exacerbate public divisions, which compose 23 percent of posts in the dataset, are the highest performing, averaging 150 reposts, 470 likes, and 28 replies per post. These same posts have been viewed by an estimated 293,666 users and are statistically significantly associated with a higher sharing volume, with an estimated 41 percent increase compared to other posts.
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