This article investigates the production culture and routines of “troll farms” in three Arab countries—Tunisia, Egypt, and Iraq—from a production studies approach. A production studies approach enables us to focus on the working conditions of paid trolls. We employed qualitative methods to look inside the “black box” of Arab troll farms. From February to April 2020, we conducted semi-structured interviews with eight disinformation workers at both managerial and staff levels. We propose to understand disinformation work as a specific type of digital labor, characterized by very intense shifts and emotionally burdensome daily tasks, absence of legal job contracts, and highly surveilled work environments. The article contributes to understand disinformation practices outside and beyond the West; it situates disinformation activities within the broader context of digital media industries; it provides a detailed analysis of the features that distinguish troll farms in the Arab world from those that emerged in other regions of the Global South; and it reconnects the research on disinformation to digital labor studies.

中文翻译：

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“我很难继续做那份工作”：了解巨魔农场在阿拉伯世界的工作

本文从生产研究的角度探讨了突尼斯、埃及和伊拉克这三个阿拉伯国家“巨魔农场”的生产文化和惯例。生产研究方法使我们能够关注付费巨魔的工作条件。我们采用定性方法来观察阿拉伯巨魔农场的“黑匣子”。2020 年 2 月至 4 月，我们对 8 名管理层和员工层面的虚假信息工作者进行了半结构化访谈。我们建议将虚假信息工作理解为一种特定类型的数字劳动，其特点是班次非常紧张、日常任务对情感造成负担、缺乏合法的工作合同以及受到高度监控的工作环境。这篇文章有助于理解西方以外的虚假信息做法；它将虚假信息活动置于更广泛的数字媒体行业背景下；它详细分析了阿拉伯世界巨魔农场与南半球其他地区出现的巨魔农场的特征；它将虚假信息研究与数字劳动力研究重新联系起来。