Hate Speech and Disinformation Surge in Iraq as Regional War Spills Online

The organizations belong to a coalition supported by UNESCO through its European Union-funded Social Media 4 Peace project, which has operated in Iraq since 2025.

The regional war involving Iran has spilt into Iraq's digital spaces, bringing a surge of hate speech, misleading information and targeted harassment that is putting journalists and other public voices under growing pressure. Following the conflict's escalation in late February, Iraqi media organizations, academics and civil society groups mobilised to track harmful posts and examine how regional tensions were being used to deepen divisions inside the country.

The organizations belong to a coalition supported by UNESCO through its European Union-funded Social Media 4 Peace project, which has operated in Iraq since 2025. Their work addresses a difficult challenge: responding to online abuse and manipulation through measures that respect freedom of expression and people's access to information.

Local Monitors Examine 713 Cases of Harmful Content

Five organizations led the monitoring effort:

• ANAT for Media Development,
• Iraqi Digital Reporting Platform for Female Journalists,
• Journalists Home in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq,
• Iraqi Centre for Strategic Analytics, and
• Media Monitoring Centre.

Between 5 and 29 March 2026, the team reviewed thousands of social media posts and closely analysed 713 cases of harmful content, drawn primarily from Facebook.

Researchers combined manual observation with keyword searches and reports from affected users, giving people experiencing online harm a direct way to contribute evidence. A dedicated reporting platform was integrated into the coalition's website, helping the team investigate patterns of disinformation, hate speech, threats and attacks against journalists during a period of rapidly escalating tensions.

War Narratives Turn Into Weapons in Domestic Disputes

The monitoring identified an intensification of hate speech, incitement and accusations of treason, alongside a shift in how the war was discussed. Online narratives increasingly used the regional conflict to mobilize domestic actors around disputes over weapons, the United States' role, the influence of armed groups and Iraq's political future, drawing religious themes and historical memory into those arguments.

Repeated wording across accounts, closely synchronized posts and the recycling of videos, allegations and hashtags suggested that some campaigns involved organized or partly organized activity. The researchers did not establish proof of centralized control, a distinction that matters when assessing who might be directing these narratives. Their findings indicate that Iraq's digital spaces were doing more than reflecting regional events; they were bringing those events into domestic struggles over power, identity and public opinion.

Journalists and Women Need Faster, Focused Protection

The coalition called for more responsive, real-time monitoring and practical protection mechanisms as journalists, analysts and content creators faced increased targeting. Its findings also showed disproportionate digital violence against women, highlighting the need for interventions that directly address technology-facilitated gender-based violence and the particular forms of harassment women encounter online.

Growing volumes of disinformation and AI-generated content have made stronger, more widely available verification capacity another priority. Audience behaviour also plays a part in spreading harmful material, with emotional reactions helping posts reach more people, making media and information literacy essential to helping users assess what they read, watch and share.

UNESCO plans to expand media and information literacy initiatives, safety training for journalists and content creators, and support for fact-checking through Social Media 4 Peace. Local partners contribute knowledge of Iraq's communities, political tensions and cultural context, helping ground this work in people's lived experiences. The coalition's broader purpose is to build an evidence-based, human rights-centred response to online harm, connecting Iraq with similar project initiatives in Indonesia, Kenya, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, South Africa and Kyrgyzstan.