Facebook has suggested that Iran was engaged in attempted online election and political manipulation as far back as 2011 and tried to influence the result of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.

A report by Graphika – which has been allowed access to Facbook’s data – says that there were thousands of accounts and these promoted Ron Paul’s presidential bid and the Occupy movement as well as a Yes vote in the Scottish referendum. The company suggests that such efforts may have been more designed to test the water than significant operations, but that fake accounts linked to Iran’s state broadcaster were promoting messages favourable to that state. Arabic language efforts aimed at Iran’s neighbours were much bigger operations.

Graphika makes clear that many of the posts were entreaties to follow Islamic teachings and amplify state messaging as well as attempts at audience building. It also suggests that for a period some of the fake accounts promoted the arabic language version of Russian broadcaster Sputnik. But there were activities related to elections:

“This activity focused briefly on three main topics: the Republican primaries of early 2012, the Occupy movement of the same period, and the Scottish independence referendum of 2014. In each case, the network used a combination of fake accounts, pages, and groups to push its messaging, with the fake accounts sharing and promoting the pages and groups. Rather than the website-heavy content of later efforts, this was much more based on visuals, particularly cartoons. None of these posts yielded major viral impact, measured in likes or shares, and some of the pages were abandoned after only a few days… Nevertheless, Facebook’s revelation is of historical interest: it provides a confirmed data point on attempted foreign interference in Western democratic exercises as far back as 2012, a full electoral cycle before the Russian interference of 2016.”

Specifically talking about the Scottish Independence referendum, Graphika says:

“None of these posts achieved viral impact, measured in the number of likes, shares, or comments. Typical posts scored a few dozen reactions, sometimes a little over 100. This is not negligible, but it is a long way away from being an effort on the sort of scale that might have had an impact on the referendum. In March 2014, six months before the Scottish referendum, the cartoons page stopped posting, for unknown reasons.”

This report is interesting for two main reasons. First in that it shows that Iran was apparently active in this field before Russia’s Internet Research Agency started. Second, because it confirms the sorts of operations that could be undertaken, although it appears that Iran decided that attempts to use cartoons to influence western elections were not likely to be successful.