Academics document $11 million digital campaign targeting Europe and US

A paid digital influence operation that ran for three years across 30 countries has been documented by two academics. The campaign, which likely cost more than $11 million, targeted audiences in Europe, the United States, and Lebanon with content promoting racist, Islamophobic, and anti-Qatar views.

The investigation was published on Thursday. The report, titled Manufacturing the “Great Replacement”, details at least 533 million exposures of social media advertisements between October 2023 and October 2026. The ads appeared on platforms including YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook.

Marc Owen Jones, a professor at Northwestern University’s Doha campus, and independent researcher Sohan Dsouza authored the report. They described the effort as perhaps one of the biggest digital influence and disinformation operations ever documented.

The data shows that ad spending was timed to coincide with national elections in target countries. In France, ad buying continued through the months preceding the June 2024 European Parliament elections. In the United Kingdom, purchasing stopped on May 17, 2024, days before the general election was called.

The researchers noted that this sustained promotion of anti-Muslim and anti-migrant narratives raises concerns about attempts to shape the political environment ahead of votes. They warned that the campaign remains active in countries approaching major elections in 2027, including France and Italy.

France accounted for about a third of all advertisement placements, the highest share among targeted nations. The United Kingdom recorded the largest number of exposures at 154 million, followed by the United States with 100 million.

Jones explained that in Europe, the ads used the structure of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. This theory posits that white people are being replaced by immigrants. The ads cast Qatar in the role that anti-Semitic versions of the theory assign to George Soros, portraying the Gulf state as a hidden power directing Muslim immigration to Islamise Europe.

A separate TikTok campaign promoted regime change in Iran to European audiences. These ads began running on February 24, four days before the United States and Israel launched their war on the country.

The report states that evidence suggests with moderate to high confidence that the operation was launched from within Israel. Metadata from video editors indicates they worked in the Israeli time zone and used machines with Hebrew drive and folder names.

Qatar has faced similar Israeli-linked campaigns in the past. Last month, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz found that a group of Israeli influence experts had worked on a secret campaign targeting Doha after the October 7, 2023, attacks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party recently accused Doha of interfering in Israeli elections. The Qatari Foreign Ministry denounced these allegations as a disinformation campaign.