AP: Kenya army, Somali militia swap Twitter insults

NAIROBI, Kenya—Kenyan soldiers and members of an extremist Islamist militant group have been fighting each other in Somalia since Kenya invaded two months ago. Now, their spokesmen are taking the battle onto Twitter, with taunts, accusations and insults being directly traded in a rare engagement on the Internet.

The propaganda war on the microblogging website shows the increasingly sophisticated use of media by both sides and underscores that there is often little reliable information about the conflict in Somalia that now directly or indirectly involves a half-dozen nations, analysts say.

“The tweets themselves will not be entirely accurate but it will allow analysts to triangulate that information and come up with a more accurate picture of what is really happening,” said E.J. Hogendoorn of the International Crisis Group think tank.

FULL ARTICLE (AP via The Boston Globe)

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