Hijab Row
Muskan Hijab row: Analysis finds Pakistan's role in amplifying protest
Bengaluru/New Delhi: From promoting hashtags to creating fake accounts,the recent hijab controversy in Karnataka involving a college girl named Muskan, which hit the political paradigm of India, seems to have been fuelled by Pakistan.
The row started last week when a video went viral on social media platforms where a burqa-clad woman was seen confronting some students wearing saffron scarves and shouting “Jai Shri Ram” as they heckled her.
She was heard shouting 'Allah hu Akbar' in the video.
The woman was later identified by the media as Muskan.
The incident reportedly happened in Mandya pre-University college.
Meanwhile, hashtag #Muskan started trending on the social media platforms ever since the row erupted and now it is emerging that the maximum number of users who tweeted on this hashtag were from Pakistan.
In its report, Digital Forensics, Research and Analytics Centre (D-FRAC), a group that describes itself as a non-partisan and independent media organisation which focuses on fact-checking and identifying hate speech, said: "The maximum number of users who tweeted on this hashtag were from Pakistan, with more than 3000 users tweeting on the topic."
"Pakistani tweets were roughly three times more than India’s. Hence, we can measure the contribution of our neighbor Pakistan to expand the ongoing social media trend," read its report.
"Many imposters in Pakistan are misleading people in many ways. For example, an account named Hira Yusuf(@PapaPrinces4). This account changed its username to @JosieWilliam and then to @JosieTourist," the report added.
The organization further said: "That is to say, Pakistan and many other international forces have done a lot to give heat in the ongoing HijabRow controversy."
The group also found in its analysis that the top five accounts that interacted the most with the hashtag are from Pakistan.
Interestingly, the real account of Muskan was not found on Twitter but the micro-blogging site is flooding with fake accounts of her.
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