Syrians horrified by 'crime of no honour' killing By Lina Shaikhouni and Chris Bell

A video documenting the brutal murder of a young woman in Syria has been met with outrage and horror online - and shone a renewed spotlight on so-called "honour killings" in the country.

The young woman, identified by Syrian news outlets and social media users as "Rasha Bseis", was shot repeatedly with an automatic rifle in the rebel-held town of Jarablus, near the Turkish border, by a man reported to be her brother. Some said the young woman was under 18 years of age.

The BBC has not been able to independently verify these reports.

In the video, a young woman cowers against a wall as a man stands over her with a gun. He opens fire, kicking dust up from the floor and wall. A voice in the background yells "wash away your shame".

The video has been widely viewed and shared online. A report on the Lebanese Al-Modon news website said police were investigating and an arrest warrant had been issued for the man.

'Crime of no honour'

Activists responded with a campaign to denounce so-called "honour" violence.

A graphic of the murdered woman looking fearfully into the camera, featuring the caption "crime of no honour", has been circulating online since Monday, BBC Monitoring reported.

Kish Malek (Check Mate), a civil society organisation based in southern Turkey, was among activist groups to publish the image on Facebook.

"A young man from the city of Jarablus has killed his sister after direct instigation by his friend allegedly to 'wash her of shame'," the organisation posted.

"The instigator filmed the crime and published it on social media networks," it added.

Sharing the image, Syrian NGO Women Now for Development issued a statement demanding justice for Rasha Bseis.

"Rasha is not only the victim of the spread of weapons and lapses in security, she is the victim of a dangerous social concept, under the pretext of 'shame washing' as an accepted - and sometimes encouraged - punishment," they wrote.

A copy of their statement would be sent to the local council governing Jarablus and all other concerned legal bodies, the organisation noted.

Syrian writer and women's rights activist Rima Flihan told the BBC there are no accurate statistics for honour killings in Syria but that "Syria and the Middle East had ranked highly in previous global statistics".

"I have worked in successive campaigns since 2005 in Syria to counter what is described as honour crimes," she said.

"The crime is encouraged by a law that is lenient on the murderer and a society which partly reduces a family's honour to a woman's body."

In 2009, Syria scrapped a law limiting or waiving punishment for men convicted of killing female relatives they regarded as having illicit sex.

At the time, Human Rights Watch said the measure did not go far enough. The law introduced a minimum two-year sentence for perpetrators of so-called "honour killings".

Since 2011, the conflict in Syria has claimed more than 350,000 lives. Ms Flihan says the chaos in Syria as a result of the war has made the problem of so-called "honour killings" worse.

"The presence of extremist groups in some areas encourages such crimes, and so does the law in others," she said.

"In both cases, the woman is the victim."

However, she told the BBC that the reaction to such crimes shows some positive change.

"I have noticed through monitoring people's comments on these crimes that there is a wider section of society that are rejecting and condemning them," she said.

Anna Dovgalyuk: Why do people think her 'manspreading' video is a Kremlin hoax?

Millions of people around the world have watched a viral video that appears to show a woman taking direct action against "manspreading". So why do some think it is actually Kremlin-backed disinformation?

A woman creeps up to unsuspecting men on the St Petersburg Metro. The men are taking up lots of space, with their legs wide open. Before they can react, the woman dumps a bottle of diluted bleach onto their trousers. It's enough to make a stain, although not strong enough to cause serious injury.

The video was made by Anna Dovgalyuk, a Russian activist, student and social media star. And it racked up millions of views before being removed from YouTube.

The story was picked up by numerous news websites and caused a huge online uproar. Comments heaped praise, scorn, and more extreme threats of violence on Anna and others involved with the video.

But along with the video's viral spread came questions. Was it staged? And also was it - as some believe - a crafted piece of propaganda, sponsored and spread by the Russian government? And if it was, what was the aim?

Anna Dovgalyuk is relatively new to YouTube activism. The video was only her second post on the platform. Her first also had a feminist theme, and was also shot on the St Petersburg Metro. It was a protest against upskirting - taking photos up women's skirts - and showed a model (not Anna) lifting her dress to show passengers her underwear.

That video also got a lot of coverage, and prompted Anna to turn her attention to a project attacking "manspreading" - the phenomenon of men on public transport who sit with their legs wide open or otherwise inconvenience fellow passengers by taking up too much space.

"I thought that it was one of those problems which should be highlighted, that people should be made aware of," she told BBC Trending.

The video went up in late September, and was clocking up views at a rate of a million a day. But almost immediately, questions were raised about its authenticity.

An online news outlet in St Petersburg called Bumaga quoted a man who supposedly appeared in her video, admitting that he was paid to sit on the train and get squirted. Bumaga reproduced a post by the man on the Russian social network Vkontakte. (His account was deleted and the BBC could not immediately reach the man for comment).

Additionally, in the video, Anna states that it was created "in assistance with friends who share my position."

Speaking to the BBC, she denied that it was staged or that anyone was paid to get diluted bleach thrown on them.

"This is some completely random guy," she says, "I don't know what kind of actor he considers himself to be... but there is no evidence, it's just somebody's claim."

'Staged Kremlin propaganda'

The story took another turn when a European Union project to combat Russian misinformation, EUvsDisinfo, called the video "staged Russian propaganda".

According to this theory, the stunt was part of the Kremlin's surreptitious online interventions into various culture wars around the world, and designed to provide evidence that Western-style feminism has gone too far.

The EUvsDisinfo report gave the video another burst of publicity - and several of the same outlets which credulously reported on the video when it went viral ran reports with the European Union's take.

EUvsDisinfo cited two main pieces of evidence: the Bumaga report, and also the fact that the video was picked up and repackaged by a Kremlin-funded social media venture called In The NOW, which has more than three million likes on Facebook. In The NOW also has accounts on Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube.

But In The NOW began as a TV programme on Russia Today - now known as RT.

RT and the news agency Sputnik, are directly funded by the Kremlin. Western governments as well as media critics have called them propaganda outlets.

And EUvsDisinfo sees the dark arts of the Kremlin at work in Anna's video and its treatment by In the NOW. "The video stages extreme feminist activism and manages to provoke extreme anti-feminist reactions," its post on the video concluded. EUvsDisinfo turned down a request for an interview about this story.

But is this a case of seeing Russian bogeymen where there are none? Wouldn't any social media company pick up on such clickable content?

In The NOW - which is based in Berlin - says that although it is financed by Russian government money, it has editorial independence.

"There's no top-down editorial memo that goes out, nothing like that," says J Ray Sparks, an American who is chief operating officer of Maffick, the German company that produces In The NOW. "It has never been some kind of propaganda outlet."

Although In The NOW doesn't deny that it receives money from the Russian government, this information isn't readily apparent on its Facebook page. When asked whether its mix of light-hearted stories and more serious news had ever included a video critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Sparks replied: "We haven't done anything recently."

In the NOW's video about Anna's manspreading stunt has racked up more than six million views.

Khashoggi: Bots feed Saudi support after disappearance By Chris Bell and Alistair Coleman

Suspected bot accounts are attempting to shape the social media narrative following the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Arabic hashtags expressing support for de facto Saudi leader Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, condemning news organisation Al Jazeera and urging users to "unfollow enemies of the nation" were among those amplified by the involvement of bot networks alongside genuine users.

Twitter has suspended a number of bot accounts.

Mr Khashoggi is missing, presumed dead, after he was seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October.

Turkish officials allege the journalist, who had been critical of the Saudi regime, was killed there.

On 14 October, the Arabic hashtag translating as "we all have trust in Mohammed Bin Salman" was among the top global trends, featuring in 250,000 tweets. Additionally, "We have to stand by our leader" was used more than 60,000 times.

On Wednesday, a hashtag translating as "unfollow enemies of the nation" was also highly used, while in the past 24 hours the term "campaign to close Al Jazeera, the channel of deception" has gained traction, used close to 100,000 times on the social network.

Bot networks were used by both sides in an effort to control the conversation on social media during the crisis.

Ben Nimmo, Information Defence Fellow at the Atlantic Council, analysed one of the Arabic-language hashtags with bot involvement.

"Unfollow enemies of the nation" was used in excess of 100,000 times. The vast majority of that came through retweets, which can be a signal of bot activity.

Accounts which had been dormant for a long time were suddenly tweeting again, posting identical or near-identical material to other suspicious accounts.

Others were newly-created or exhibited other characteristics typical of bot accounts.

Attempts to control and manipulate social media conversations have become an increasingly prominent global issue.

On Wednesday, Twitter published more than 10 million tweets from suspected state-backed Russian and Iranian "troll farms".

While US national security chiefs have warned of "a pervasive messaging campaign by Russia to weaken and divide the US".