Tagging the Emirate: Language, Coordination and the Taliban's Digital Pursuit of Legitimacy

ABSTRACT This study examines how political actors leverage social media in Afghanistan as a tool for political legitimation. Framing social media as a potential supply of legitimacy, it analysed X (formerly known as Twitter) content posted by the former Afghan government, humanitarian and Taliban political accounts between January 2020 and December 2022 using qualitative thematic analysis and descriptive statistics. The analysis explores how the Taliban seeks to construct legitimacy at the national and international levels by examining two central elements of digital communication: linguistic patterns and technical coordination. To identify unique strategies, this was then compared to the digital activity of their political opponents. The results revealed that cohesion across Taliban officials' communication on X was a focal part of their wider approach to digital political communication. In contrast, representatives of the Afghan government and humanitarian groups did not display clearly connected approaches to their digital communication, in particular diluting the clarity of their messages through inconsistent linguistic patterns. This study finds that the coordinated application of technical features and linguistically tailored messages online operates as a key mechanism in insurgent legitimation strategies designed to target and mislead audiences at the national and international levels.