Accounts tied to Iran's state broadcaster quietly campaigned for Scottish independence ahead of the 2014 referendum, according to an analysis prepared for Facebook by the research firm Graphika and released in early May 2020. The operators, the study said, leaned on fabricated pages to spread memes, drawings, and political messaging in support of a “Yes” vote that would have pulled Scotland out of the United Kingdom.
One of the pages, active in 2014 under the name The Scotsman Cartoon, published illustrations pressing the case for leaving. Several singled out David Cameron, then Britain's prime minister, casting him as a symbol of English domination. The material never travelled far: most posts drew only a few dozen reactions, occasionally passing a hundred, well below the reach needed to sway a national vote. The page went silent in March 2014, half a year before Scots went to the polls, and Graphika said the reason was unclear.
Facebook, which removed about 500 accounts, pages, and groups it traced to Iran's state broadcaster, said the network mixed genuine and invented profiles to hide who was behind it. The findings fit a wider pattern that cybersecurity researchers have long tracked. David Grout, then a technology executive at the security firm FireEye, said state-backed groups from countries such as Iran and Russia run parallel campaigns of digital espionage, online influence, and outright sabotage, often to read and steer political trends before governments sit down to negotiate.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in May 2020, in its own words.