Imaginary Coups with Real Implications

This article by Al Jazeera (Anatomy of a disinformation campaign: The coup that never was) is an interesting one, describing an apparently Saudi lead disinformation campaign on Twitter a few weeks ago, one where a fictional coup in Qatar was created by sock puppet accounts and Saudi influencers on Twitter.

Despite the unverified claims, the prevalence of the claims meant that it was reported internationally, further spreading the rumours. It brings my mind back to the some of the topics of previous weeks, namely information problems and coups.

How can a government respond  to the large-scale and coordinated disinformation campaigns that are now possible with social media, given that they could come from both within and outside their state? It seems like creating an imaginary coup could be a powerful tool for a group intending to stage an actual coup.