Investigating responses to US drone strikes in Yemen using Twitter data

Abstract

As part of the War on Terror, the US conducted at least 378 air and drone strikes in Yemen from 2002 to 2023. While primarily targeting members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), these strikes have killed over 1,000 people, including more than 125 civilians. This research aims to understand the broader societal impact of US military action as shown on Twitter, now known as ‘X’. The authors take a mixed-methods approach, using both qualitative and quantitative data to investigate this impact. They perform word- and tweet-level analyses on the content and sentiment of a subset of Yemeni Twitter users and contrast the content of Yemeni users’ tweets about US drone strikes with that of US users’ tweets. Finally, the article quantifies the temporal relationship between the frequency and severity of US drone strikes and Twitter activity levels in Yemen, considering the prevalence of Twitter bots.