Thailand and Cambodia border clashes: Let the influence campaigns begin.

As border clashes between Thailand and Cambodia erupted in late July, Brinker’s narrative intelligence platform scoured the online space looking to answer a simple question: Who started it?

We were't looking for a definitive answer, but rather to see who is shaping the narratives, and in what means. Here are our initial findings:

Competing Narratives and Reach Disparities

Out of the multitude of posts collected, we singled out 1,400 posts in English, Thai, and Khmer, directly attributing blame for the conflict, 62% claimed Thailand was the aggressor while 38% pointed to Cambodia.

However, Brinker’s reach analysis revealed an interesting disparity. Posts claiming that Cambodia was the aggressor were seen over 4 million times, while those blaming Thailand reached approximately 600,000 views. This indicates a possible asymmetry in narrative amplification, with one side gaining disproportionate visibility despite fewer originating posts.

Automated report findings

Detection of Coordinated Activity

Brinker’s platform flagged high levels of possibly coordinated behavior. Among posts portraying Thailand as the aggressor, 60% were highly similar to others, suggesting coordinated or automated efforts. In comparison, 36% of the Cambodia aggressor posts showed the same pattern. For example, 89 unique Facebook users shared identical posts blaming Thailand for the conflict.

Monitoring of Coordination Behavior: Posts with a similarity score >95%

Different Posts. Different Users. Identical Text

Hashtag Polarization

The digital landscape has also become a battleground of hashtags. Narratives accusing Thailand included tags like #ThailandOpenedFire and #JusticeForCambodia, while Cambodia-focused accusations leaned on the same tags but reversed, #CambodiaOpenedFire and #JusticeForThailand. 

Many Voices. Few Perspectives

Within hours of this current conflict’s onset, we see a highly-polarized blame game taking place on social media in which many players seem inauthentic. As we've seen in similar past conflicts, those users were not created today, but were prepared a long time before for action day.

AI Narrative Network Analysis: Each cluster is a group of posts sharing a similar narrative. In this case, each cluster depicts a group of posts in which the content is >95% similar.

Modern Warfare

As we've seen in Romania, India, Israel, France, Ukraine and more, wars happen on a new front - the online psyops front, and this is the one that is hardest to fight against as it is borderless and predicated on appearance that is easily manipulated.