The rival Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are engaged in intense propaganda battles across broadcast and cyberspace as each seeks to build support for their side of the 3-year-old Sudan war.
“The SAF and RSF have engaged in a virtual war on social media and traditional media platforms to shape domestic and international opinions to their advantage … since the first day of the war,” analyst Hamid Khalafallah wrote for the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.
Along with their own media channels, each side relies on supporters to amplify the propaganda. Other groups add their own interpretations and commentaries to the mix, creating an information environment where the truth is hard to find. The result is a deeply fragmented Sudanese society, according to researcher Selma el-Obeid.
“Although the SAF and RSF work hard to shape the war narrative by building large supporter networks and using various methods such as disinformation and censorship, it is clear they no longer fully control the flow of information,” el-Obeid wrote recently in “Sudan Wartime Online Propaganda,” a study published by the French Institute of International Relations.
“Social media analysis shows that Sudanese politicians, military figures, influencers, and followers weave a tangled web of exchanges filled with rivalries, lies, and propaganda,” el-Obeid added.
As Sudan’s de facto government, the SAF controls public broadcasters and key media platforms. That has given it a substantial information advantage over the RSF. The SAF’s top 10 media platforms reached 13.3 million people online in the first half of 2025 compared to the RSF’s audience of 375,000, according to Bloom Social Analytics.
The SAF portrays itself as the protector of Sudan’s territorial integrity and sovereignty against the RSF’s rebellion. The RSF, on the other hand, has taken up the banner of democratic rule despite its use of brutal violence to subdue communities in Darfur and elsewhere.
Heavy-handed censorship and governmental threats against journalists also make it difficult to sort truth from falsehood, el-Obeid wrote in her study.
Minister of Culture and Information Khalid Al-Aiser has described any Sudanese news coverage of the RSF as unpatriotic. The government, headed by SAF chief Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, suspended reporting by Saudi news channels Al Arabiya and Al Hadath along with Sky News in 2024. It also briefly banned Saudi Arabia’s Al Sharq TV in 2025.
The government has eased some media restrictions but still blocks outlets from reporting live from the field outside Port Sudan without government permission. That largely leaves information about the war in the hands of the SAF, the RSF and their supporters, el-Obeid noted.
On the SAF’s side, anonymous online media figures known as al-Bashoum and al-Insirafi publish popular content on YouTube with links to other social media networks, including Facebook, X, TikTok, and Telegram. Al-Bashoum claims to live in Sudan. Al-Insirafi’s location is unknown.
“The SAF depends heavily on the goodwill of its supporters,” el-Obeid wrote. However, an analysis of the SAF’s social media traffic by the United Kingdom-based Valent Projects found that much of that online support could be fake.
Pro-SAF tweets attempted to show widespread public support for an escalation in attacks against RSF targets, “while authentic Sudanese voices called for an end to the violence,” Khalafallah wrote and equated the manipulation to “gaslighting” the public.
With limited access to traditional broadcast outlets, the RSF leans heavily on social media platforms, bots, troll farms and foreign help to drive its propaganda, according to el-Obeid.
Some of those bots and troll farms are based in the United Arab Emirates, which supplies media specialists to run RSF propaganda campaigns, according to el-Obeid. Other bot farms operate in RSF-controlled territory in Sudan.
Together, the RSF’s propaganda serves a single purpose: to transform the image of its leader Gen. Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo from the former head of genocidal Janjaweed forces into a statesman worthy of running the country.
“Clearly, the RSF and its supporters campaigned to win public support by rewriting the RSF’s history,” el-Obeid wrote. That includes dismissing the massacres in Darfur in 2003 and the killing of peaceful protesters during the 2019 ouster of former dictator Omar al-Bashir.
Ultimately, Sudan’s flood of propaganda has made it nearly impossible for anyone to understand what is happening there, according to el-Obeid.
“The war of words has diminished the quality and credibility of information, turning social media into both a battleground and a propaganda tool with serious and immediate consequences,” she wrote.