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1. Introduction to RAW

Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) is one of the key intelligence agencies in India . The Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) stands as one of India’s key intelligence agencies. It initially focused primarily on China and Pakistan , but over the past forty years, it has expanded its mandate, significantly bolstering India’s global influence. RAW’s primary responsibility is to provide the government with strategic and comprehensive information to facilitate challenging decision-making. Collaborating with numerous intelligence services globally, such as the CIA, MI6, and Mossad, RAW actively plans, executes, and exchanges intelligence.

2. Organisation

2.1 structure .

The Prime Minister of India directly oversees RAW through its director. Assisting the director is a deputy director and other senior officers responsible for overseeing various operational units and departments. RAW divides its operational sections based on specialisation and area of competence. The primary divisions of RAW are:

• External Intelligence : This section is in charge of compiling and analysing data that originates from sources outside of India.
• Technical Support Division : This division seeks to collect and process intelligence through the use of technology. Furthermore, it offers technical assistance to other RAW departments.
• Aviation Research Centre : This division manages a fleet of aircraft and conducting aerial surveillance and reconnaissance missions.
• Joint Intelligence Committee : The Joint Intelligence Committee coordinates all Indian intelligence institutions’.
• Operations : The department bears the responsibility of planning and executing covert operations to fulfil India’s national security goals.

Besides these divisions, RAW comprises several other operational units. An example is special teams, a highly competent group of individuals conducting clandestine operations. RAW accepts applications from both military and civilian organisations in India.

In the end, the primary goals of RAW’s operational structure include gathering outside intelligence, carrying out covert activities, and advising the government on matters pertaining to national security. Thus, to safeguard India’s security interests, all of RAW’s sub departments convene and address threats to the country’s issues. [ source ].

2.2  Ranks 

There are many types of ranks in RAW, and each rank has its own importance. According to the post, the officer has many responsibilities.

2.2.1 Class I/Group A Officer

• 1. Secretary/Additional Secretary (R)
• 2. Joint Secretary
• 3. Director/Deputy Secretary/Attach

2.2.3 Group A Officer

• 1. Senior Field Officer
• 2. Field Officer
• 3. Sub Area Officer
• 4. Assistant Field Officer 

2.3  Job Profile of RAW Agent

A RAW agent’s duties include keeping tabs on military and political developments in the nations surrounding India. In essence, RAW agents in India have the principal duties and roles outlined below:

• 1. Gathering foreign intelligence
• 2. Conducting anti-terrorism operations
• 3. Advising policymakers in the country
• 4. Counter-propagation
• 5. Securing the country’s nuclear program [ source ].

2.4 Recruiting

In India, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) hires personnel from a variety of government agencies, armed forces, intelligence services, police departments, and administrative services, among others. However, this does not imply that these services are the only ones available for choosing in RAW. 

It takes a significant amount of professional experience, besides strong educational credentials to become a RAW agent. Joining India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) is an extremely tough task. Candidates aspiring to join this esteemed organisation must maintain good physical and mental health to qualify. Additionally, they need to possess a graduating degree from a recognized institution or organisation to be eligible for job opportunities at RAW. The candidate must be proficient in at least one foreign language. Indeed, applicants should be proficient communicators with a keen recall. In addition, the candidates must be younger than 56 years old. In addition, the applicant ought to have over 20 years of service experience, a citizen of India and no criminal history or an active court case. Otherwise, they will not be qualified to work as a RAW agent

2.4.1 RAW Selection

RAW frequently selects talented applicants who have passed the UPSC Civil Services Test and opted to become IPS and IFS officials to serve as RAW officers. Only after completing the foundation course at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration does a government servant become eligible for selection in RAW.

The instructors administer a psychological exam and conduct a raw interview at the end of the course. Those that make the shortlist begin a one-year internship at RAW. Appropriate people are recruited by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) for the Indian civil services, which include the IAS, IPS, IFS, and other related services. Given that, the UPSC Civil Services Test is divided into three phases. UPSC Mains and Personality Test, UPSC Interview, and UPSC Preliminary Examination [ source ].

3.0  RAW Operational Information

3.1 foreign intelligence.

RAW supports numerous significant operations on foreign land with intelligence. It collaborates closely with intelligence agencies in India, including the Intelligence Bureau (IB). Through both overt and covert missions, the agency gathers military, economic, scientific, and political intelligence. Additionally, it keeps an eye on gangs involved in importing weapons and ammunition into India and terrorist groups. The primary focus of RAW is India’s neighbors. Additionally, RAW also provides Indian officials with gathered information, which they then utilize to modify the country’s foreign and national security policies. [ source ].

3.2  Achievements of RAW 

Over the years, the leading foreign intelligence agency in India, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), has been instrumental in numerous noteworthy accomplishments. Among its notable accomplishments are:

• Role in the creation of Bangladesh : Early in the 1970s, RAW played a significant role in supporting the Bangladeshi independence movement against Pakistan, which led to the creation of Bangladesh. [ source ].
• Strategic Intelligence in Kargil War : RAW gave crucial intelligence regarding the opponent’s military coordinates, position, force size, etc. during the 1999 Kargil conflict. This aided the Indian Army in organizing and hitting the military locations of the adversary. [ source ].
• Pakistan’s Nuclear Programme : In the 1980s, Pakistan was developing a nuclear program that posed a major threat to the Indian government. RAW was instrumental in providing intelligence about this program, which finally led to Pakistan’s arrest. Other nations put pressure on them to cease their nuclear activities. [ source ].
• Surgical Strike : Numerous Indian troops were killed when Pakistan assaulted India’s Uri military camp in 2016. The counterattack was skillfully orchestrated and executed by the Indian Army. The RAW agency supplied details regarding the enemy’s personnel, positions, and other aspects [ source ].
• Balakot Airstrike : 2019 saw attacks on Indian Army soldiers in Pulwama. RAW assisted in organizing and carrying out the 2019 Balakot Airstrike as a counterattack. The bombing resulted in the destruction of a terrorist training facility in Pakistan, causing significant damage and deaths. [ source ].
• RAW has been instrumental in a number of noteworthy achievements that have significantly impacted India’s national security. It made significant contributions to the Kargil War, the Bangladeshi independence movement, and the discovery of Pakistan’s nuclear program, to name a few. RAW is still needed to conduct clandestine operations, get outside intelligence, and counsel the government on matters pertaining to national security.

4.0 Recent Operations

4.1  ‘the print’ article on raw .

The Delhi High Court denied a request asking the Central Government to order the publication of an article on Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) by the digital news site “The Print” to be blocked. In essence, it stated that publication encompasses both the right to know and elements of press freedom. 

The appeal of lawyer Raghav Awasthi to establish norms prohibiting media outlets from publishing any source-based speculation regarding the whereabouts of government officials or diplomats sent overseas was denied by a division bench consisting of Acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora. employed by an Indian spy agency.

The Print released the contentious piece on 30 November of last year. The article is titled “Nijjar-Pannun effect: RAW closes doors in North America for the first time since founding in 1968.” According to Awasthi, the report jeopardises the careers of the officers it mentions because they are now stigmatised as intelligence officers and therefore cannot serve for any other Indian mission [ source ].

The Government of India keeps the right, under applicable law, to take action against any magazine or to remove any article which, in its opinion, compromises national security. “In the prima facie opinion of this Court, the impugned article does not compromise the career of the officers, or cause any physical harm to the lives of their family members.” It stated that intelligence matters and the relationship between the Indian government and foreign governments should be handled extremely cautiously and that the Central Government does not need any advisory support from Awasthi. [ source ].

4.2  Canadian Sikh Leader’s Killing Sparks Diplomatic Tensions

In the midst of the escalating diplomatic crisis between India and Canada after New Delhi accused him of assassination, the death of a Sikh leader with Canadian citizenship on 18 J2023, close to Vancouver, western Canada, where a large number of Sikhs reside, highlights the growing work of the Indian intelligence agency and its reliance on expanding its network in the West under the rule of Narendra Modi.

The Canadian government announced the expulsion of an Indian diplomat it claimed was engaged in the assassination, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused India of being involved in the death of Hardeep Singh Nigar.

Rejecting these charges, New Delhi stated that terrorists and extremists who it said threatened India’s security are given sanctuary in Canada.

According to R. said K. Yadav’s memoirs, India’s foreign intelligence agency “transformed into a bold organization, capable of carrying out its operations across the globe to protect the interests of Indian citizens.” Yadav was an officer in the agency for nearly forty years [ source ].

4.3 Terrorist Attacks in Pakistan

There has been a notable increase in terrorist attacks in Pakistan. The most recent incident was a suicide bombing on 29 September 2022, which targeted a religious gathering in the Mastung area of Balochistan province, southwest Pakistan, during the Prophet’s Mohamed Birthday celebration. The attack claimed the lives of sixty people. Numerous people suffered injuries.

A few hours later, another explosion rocked a mosque during Friday prayers in the Hangu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, northwest Pakistan, resulting in the deaths of at least five people and injuries to twelve others.

Although no one has yet claimed responsibility for the two most recent attacks, Pakistan’s Interim Interior Minister Sarfraz Ahmed Bugti alleges Indian involvement in the Balochistani attack. In Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, he briefed reporters, implicating the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of the Indian Intelligence Agency in the recent terrorist attacks in the Karachi region, located in the south of the country. [ source ].

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) stands as a crucial pillar in India’s intelligence infrastructure, dedicated to providing strategic intelligence crucial for national security decision-making. Moreover, its structured organisational setup, comprising various departments and operational units, underscores its multifaceted approach towards gathering external intelligence and executing covert operations. Notably, RAW’s achievements, spanning from its pivotal role in the creation of Bangladesh to its contributions during conflicts like the Kargil War and operations against terrorism, highlight its significant impact on India’s security landscape.

Recruitment into RAW demands stringent criteria, including educational qualifications, experience, and expertise in foreign languages, thereby ensuring a highly skilled and capable workforce. Furthermore, collaboration with other intelligence agencies and governmental bodies, coupled with its proactive stance in gathering intelligence, serves to strengthen India’s defence and policy-making capabilities.

However, recent events, such as the diplomatic tensions following accusations of RAW involvement in incidents abroad and the escalating terrorist attacks in neighbouring Pakistan , underscore the ongoing challenges and complexities faced by intelligence agencies in maintaining regional stability and safeguarding national interests.

As the geopolitical landscape evolves, RAW’s adaptability and effectiveness in addressing emerging threats while upholding principles of transparency and accountability will remain paramount. Moreover, collaborative efforts, both domestically and internationally, are essential to counteract evolving security challenges effectively. Therefore, RAW’s continued commitment to excellence and innovation will be instrumental in shaping India’s security paradigm in the years to come.

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RAW’s Ravi Sinha who headed operations is now agency’s new chief

Currently in charge of the agency’s operations wing, Sinha will take charge from Samant Kumar Goel, who completes his four-year stint at the helm on June 30.

THE APPOINTMENTS Committee of Cabinet has approved the appointment of senior IPS officer Ravi Sinha as the chief of India’s external intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) for a period of two years.

According to an order issued Monday by the Ministry of Personnel and Training, “The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the appointment of 59-year-old Sinha, a 1988-batch IPS officer from Chhattisgarh , who is currently Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, as the Secretary R&AW for a tenure of two years from the date of assumption of the charge of post, or until further orders, whichever is earlier.”

Deputed to the agency around 20 years ago, Sinha has worked in different desks and is widely considered in the intelligence community as an expert on India’s neighbouring countries.

“He has served in Jammu and Kashmir and in the Northeast. He was also posted in Bhutan, Hong Kong, China and The Hague. The Centre decided to appoint him after they found him to be a specialist on countries in India’s immediate neighbourhood.He has vast experience in handling matters related to Pakistan, Myanmar and Kashmir apart from the Khalistan issue,” a senior intelligence official said.

Another officer said that in the past six years, Sinha was part of different operations related to Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Northeast and those against Left-Wing Extremism after coordinating with different state police and paramilitary forces.

His predecessor Goel was appointed R&AW chief for two years in June 2019. He was later given two extensions of one year each in 2021 and June 2022. Goel, an expert on matters related to Jammu and Kashmir, is believed to have played a key role in planning the February 2019 surgical strike in Pakistan’s Balakot .

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Mahender Singh Manral is an Assistant Editor with the national bureau of The Indian Express. He is known for his impactful and breaking stories. He covers the Ministry of Home Affairs, Investigative Agencies, National Investigative Agency, Central Bureau of Investigation, Law Enforcement Agencies, Paramilitary Forces, and internal security. Prior to this, Manral had extensively reported on city-based crime stories along with that he also covered the anti-corruption branch of the Delhi government for a decade. He is known for his knack for News and a detailed understanding of stories. He also worked with Mail Today as a senior correspondent for eleven months. He has also worked with The Pioneer for two years where he was exclusively covering crime beat. During his initial days of the career he also worked with The Statesman newspaper in the national capital, where he was entrusted with beats like crime, education, and the Delhi Jal Board. A graduate in Mass Communication, Manral is always in search of stories that impact lives. ... Read More

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© THE INTERCEPT

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Secret Intelligence Documents Show Global Reach of India’s Death Squads

Leaked Pakistani intelligence backs up Canada’s claim of an Indian assassination program.

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The Indian government’s intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, has been planning assassinations targeting Sikh and Kashmiri activists living in foreign countries, according to secret Pakistani intelligence assessments leaked to The Intercept.

The intelligence documents identify a series of threats against people living in Pakistan from RAW, which Pakistani security officials believe is working in conjunction with local criminal and dissident networks to carry out assassinations and other attacks. According to the documents, RAW is targeting individuals and religious institutions alleged to support an armed insurgency in the disputed territory of Kashmir, as well as militant Sikh activists living in Pakistan and wanted by the Indian government.

The documents offer compelling substantiation for the sensational claim that India has been carrying out a transnational assassination program against its political enemies. The Canadian government first made headlines in September with the accusation that Indian intelligence agents orchestrated the assassination of Sikh Canadian activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil. Nijjar was gunned down outside a gurdwara — a Sikh temple — this summer in Surrey, British Columbia.

FBI Warned Sikhs in the U.S. About Death Threats After Killing of Canadian Activist

In October in Britain, the family of activist Avtar Singh Khanda called for an inquest into his sudden death, alleging that he had been poisoned by Indian intelligence agents following a series of public threats to his life. In September, The Intercept reported on threats to Sikh activists in the U.S. after the FBI warned a number of Sikh Americans about intelligence showing that their lives were in danger after the killing of Nijjar. In 2022, a 75-year-old Sikh Canadian man named Ripudaman Singh Malik, who had been acquitted of involvement in a deadly bombing of an Air India flight in 1985, was shot to death in front of his family business in Canada under circumstances that remain unclear. Despite these accusations of involvement in international assassinations, which have caused increased friction in India’s foreign relations, so far little intelligence — Canadian, Pakistani, American, or otherwise — has been made publicly available about these killings.

According to a Pakistani intelligence assessment, this summer RAW was also targeting two Sikh activists in Pakistan for assassination in the cities of Lahore and Islamabad. One alleged target in Islamabad is unnamed, while another is Lakhbir Singh Rode, a prominent Sikh separatist leader living in Pakistan since the 1990s who has long been accused of terrorism by India’s government. Rode was involved in a movement that aimed to create an independent nation in the region of Punjab known as Khalistan in the 1980s and ’90s. That campaign was crushed by a brutal counterinsurgency that claimed the lives of thousands of Sikhs, while forcing many more into exile.

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Rode’s son, a Canadian citizen named Bhagat Singh, is, like his father, prominent in the diaspora movement for Sikh separatism. He told The Intercept that his father has long been living under threat from Indian intelligence. 

“It is a well-known fact that he has been on the Indian government’s hit list for years,” Singh said, adding that he was also warned by Canadian intelligence about threats to his own life following the assassination of Nijjar this summer, which he presumes are from Indian intelligence.

“When [Nijjar] was killed, the response from many of us to our governments was, ‘We told you so,’” added Singh, referring to the community of diaspora Sikh activists. “But there is also a lot of anger that a foreign government could simply come here and murder a Canadian citizen.”

The Pakistani, Indian, and Canadian embassies did not provide comment for this story. The pace of suspected attacks inside Pakistan against individuals wanted by India appears to have accelerated in recent weeks. On November 13, India media reported the killing of another militant connected to an Islamist group in Karachi. The possible assassination followed the killings of two other Islamist militants wanted by India that had taken place recently in Pakistan’s tribal regions and the disputed territory of Kashmir . While covered in great detail by the Indian press, these killings have gone almost unmentioned in Pakistan, where local media and civil society are under de facto military control following the removal of former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

The lack of attention to the suspected assassinations of both political dissidents and militants has prompted calls for more pressure on India from some members of its diaspora. 

“Anyone who speaks out against the Indian government anywhere in the world is under threat,” said Singh.

The secret documents , which were produced by Pakistan’s Intelligence Bureau, a civilian-controlled security agency somewhat akin to the FBI, show serious concern that Indian intelligence will carry out more killings on its soil in the future.

In May, the Pakistan Intelligence Bureau warned that Indian intelligence agents based in two other countries, the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan, are being activated to carry out operations in Pakistan, suggesting that Indian operatives have a footprint throughout the region. In September, an Intelligence Bureau document again warned that the Indian government’s intelligence agency was planning “terrorist attacks” and assassinations against targets inside Pakistan: RAW agents were operating from a militant training camp in the Afghan city of Spin Boldak, it said, “to target wanted / prominent Sikh personalities in Pakistan.”

The documents are marked “Not to be disclosed/Communicated to any unauthorized person,” and The Intercept is not publishing them in full in order to protect the source who provided them. The documents specifically name threats to militants involved in the Kashmiri and Sikh separatist causes, as well as conservative Islamic movements in Pakistan. One document states that, “it has been learnt through reliable sources that hostile intelligence agency (RAW) with the collaboration of sub-nationalist groups / anti-state activists and local criminal networks is already planning to carry out terrorist attacks on the marakiz / masjid / religious seminaries / leaders / notables of Ahl-e-Hadith sect linked with organizations remained active in the Kashmir Jihad.” 

Inside Pakistan, a spate of assassinations and other attacks in recent years targeted people alleged to be involved in Sikh and Kashmiri separatism as well as Islamist militancy inside India. This October, the Pakistani government arrested people it says were involved in targeted killings of suspected militants inside Pakistan. The killings were attributed in public statements to a “hostile spy agency,” a common reference to Indian intelligence in Pakistani official communications. This summer, a former commando in Pakistan’s elite Rangers paramilitary unit was also arrested on accusations of running a network carrying out assassinations of accused militants on behalf of RAW.

“Usually, the truth of these things are only fully known decades later, but India has a long history of these types of actions.”

“The general perception in the West is that India can do no wrong and that when Pakistan accuses India of doing these types of things, they’re just being paranoid. But that is not borne out by history,” said Arif Rafiq, a scholar at the Middle East Institute and specialist on Pakistan. “Usually, the truth of these things are only fully known decades later, but India has a long history of these types of actions. When you piece it all together, it seems clear that there is a campaign today by India’s government to take an offensive strategy against these groups.”

The Pakistani government has periodically accused RAW of involvement in bombings and targeted killings inside Pakistan, including attacks against Chinese nationals working in the country and bombings targeting militant leaders wanted by India. These attacks have often been claimed publicly by separatist or extremist groups at war with the Pakistani state, including in the restive provinces of Balochistan and Sindh, that Pakistan accuses of being supported by India. The Indian government, for its part, has denied involvement in these operations or patronage of Pakistan-based militant groups, while accusing Pakistan of supporting Sikh and Kashmiri militants who have fought against it in the past.

This March, the Atlantic Council, an American think tank, published an anonymous article titled, “Who is Behind the Killings of Kashmiri Militants in Pakistan?” The article pointed to the recent killings of several former Kashmiri insurgents living in Pakistan whom the author claimed had been murdered by Indian intelligence in attacks that were left unsolved, attributed to Pakistan-based separatist groups, or deemed by the police to have been robberies gone wrong. Many of the killings targeted people who had been involved in fighting during the peak of the 1990s-era insurgency in Kashmir, but had later settled down to live and work inside Pakistan. 

The article warned that the killings by Indian intelligence may torpedo attempts at rapprochement between India and Pakistan by inviting reprisals from militant groups themselves, stating, “While militant groups that have operated in Kashmir are not as strong as they used to be, they still possess significant capabilities to strike back. The assassination of their former comrades, whether perceived or real, may trigger an angry response, thus endangering peace and stability in the region.” The article also cited a former militant criticizing Pakistan’s military establishment for turning a blind eye to the killing of ex-militants on its soil as the Kashmir dispute has lost priority in Pakistan’s foreign policy.

The anonymously authored article was subsequently pulled from the Atlantic Council website. The article was replaced with a note stating it had been removed “because it did not go through the Atlantic Council’s standard editorial process prior to publication.” 

Members of Pakistan’s Sikh community take part in a protest in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Sept. 20, 2023, following the killing in Canada of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

Rode, the individual named as a target in Pakistani intelligence documents, is the nephew of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the Sikh militant leader of the 1980s separatist insurrection. That family connection has kept him on the radar of Indian authorities, who announced the confiscation of land belonging to Rode in India this fall amid a broader crackdown on diaspora Sikh dissidents and their families.

Rode, who is living in Lahore, was described in a Pakistani intelligence document as having already been surveilled by Indian intelligence agents at a housing complex and gurdwara in the city. Information about his place of residence and the gurdwara that he frequents are included in the report, which suggests that he and another Sikh activist are at imminent risk from Indian agents or locals acting under Indian instruction. The documents warn Pakistani officials to use “heightened vigilance” and “foolproof security measures” to guard them. 

According to family members, threats to Rode have increased in recent years, forcing him to go deeper into seclusion. His son, Bhagat Singh, says that surveillance photographs of his father’s car and residence had previously been sent to Pakistani authorities by Indian intelligence, as part of a demand by India to Pakistan to turn him over.

Singh said that he himself had been placed on Canada’s no-fly list after the Indian government accused him of involvement in planning terrorist attacks in India. Singh, who is seeking legal means to remove himself from the list, strongly rejects these accusations, saying that they are part of an international campaign by the Indian government to silence dissidents in its diaspora.

“The Sikh diaspora holds protests and lobbies Western governments to speak up against the Indian government, and it is for this that we are being targeted,” Singh said. “They don’t have to prove anything in court when they make these accusations. They simply label anyone as a terrorist who fights for their rights or says that they don’t want to live under their rule anymore after what has been done to them.”

“They don’t have to prove anything in court when they make these accusations. They simply label anyone as a terrorist who fights for their rights.”

Though the Khalistan movement has been mostly suppressed in Indian Punjab, supporters have continued to rally for the cause in the diaspora, including from Pakistan and Western countries. As a result of recent protests in Western countries, some of which have resulted in vandalism and threats to Indian consular staff, the Indian government has angrily accused foreign states of nurturing the Khalistan movement in exile. Many Sikhs themselves reject what they say is an attempt by the Indian government to extend its political authority over them even as they live and gain citizenship in foreign countries.

“The diaspora is an extension of people from Punjab,” said Harinder Singh, senior fellow at the Sikh-related public education organization the Sikh Research Institute. “When dissent is being crushed, even at the level of using extrajudicial killings inside Punjab, the people who manage to escape will of course find ways to talk about these issues from abroad.”

In addition to high-profile suspected murders in Western countries, recent years have also seen at least two killings of supporters of the Khalistan movement in Pakistan. In May, Paramjit Singh Panjwar, the leader of a Pakistan-based Sikh militant organization was shot to death by an assailant on a motorcycle while out for a walk near his home in Lahore. His killing came two years after the murder of another Sikh activist in Pakistan named Harmeet Singh, who was also shot to death in Lahore near the same gurdwara frequented by Rode.

“India has been carrying out activities like this in South Asia for years. The only difference is that today they have been discovered doing it in a Western democracy,” said Harinder Singh. “Despite many hypocrisies among Western democracies, one thing that they still do take very seriously is a foreign power taking the lives of their own citizens.”

Following the assassination of Nijjar in Canada this summer, Pakistan again publicly alleged that India was running a “network of extra-territorial killings” that had now gone global. The Indian government has responded angrily to accusations from Canada and other Five Eyes countries that it is running a transnational assassination program. 

But as more details on the scope and nature of its operations come to light, the crisis over the killing of Nijjar, and potentially other Sikh dissidents, seems unlikely to disappear. The targeting of Rode and other Sikhs in foreign countries suggest that India is taking a more aggressive stance in targeting perceived enemies across borders, including through violent means.

“These killings show that India feels emboldened and that it has the geopolitical space to take these kinds of risks. There has never been an instance where it has been held to account for its excesses,” said Middle East Institute’s Rafiq. “Frankly, nobody would care if they were only killing people in Pakistan. It’s only until something happens on the other side of the world that people start paying attention.”

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The true story of Rabinder Singh, an Indian spy who became a mole for the CIA and vanished into thin air

From a hidden bunker on a quiet street in New Delhi, a secret agent watches a man ascend the steps of his three-storey home with a nondescript briefcase in tow.

Inside is a trove of top-secret documents taken from India's external intelligence agency.

The man is a mole, believed to have been leaking sensitive information to a powerful ally, as part of a high-stakes political plot to topple a foreign enemy.

It's a scene seemingly ripped from 2023's headlines — as the mission unfolds, the spy is drawn into a complicated web of betrayal and danger, culminating in a daring escape escape across borders.

But the real story behind this Netflix thriller came almost two decades before alleged international assassination plots put India's intelligence agencies under the spotlight.

Rabinder Singh was working at India's Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) in 2004 when he became the spy that vanished into thin air.

It is a story so bizarre that it has been rehashed in several dramatic accounts. 

Khufiya (House of Spies), released last month, is the Netflix adaptation of a 2012 novel called Escape To Nowhere, written by former spy chief Amar Bhushan. 

While it has been promoted as a work of fiction loosely inspired by true events, it bears some striking similarities — and some key differences — with the account offered in another book authored by a former intelligence officer.

RK Yadav's book, Mission R&AW, was released as a tell-all memoir in 2014, detailing "the first eye-opening account ... of the achievements and failures of Indian intelligence".

Piecing together the records of what unfolded reveals a desperate race to catch a double agent and understand how and why the CIA convinced an Indian citizen to turn on his own government.

Who was Rabinder Singh?

Singh first joined the R&AW in the late 80s, after a brief military career.

Media reports describe him as a clean-shaven man from an affluent family in Amritsar, the son of a retired lieutenant in the Indian Army.

Having joined the Gorkha Regiments in 1970 and worked his way up to become major, Singh was reportedly overlooked for further promotion due to his "mediocre calibre" as a soldier.

He did take part in Operation Blue Star, a sting in 1984 targeting a group of separatists known as the Khalistan movement who had taken over the Golden Temple, the most sacred site in Sikhism.

According to Yadav's book, which he told the ABC was entirely factual and based on his own career as well as interviews with internal sources, Singh was appointed to the agency by an old family friend who had worked with his father.

Stationed in Amritsar, Singh gained a reputation for his close relationships with local police, allegedly getting involved in an embezzlement scheme involving secret service funds meant for clandestine operations in Pakistan.

Singh was eventually posted to the Indian embassy in Damascus, where he once let slip to an American diplomat about a secret Indian Air Force visit to an air strip on the outskirts of the city.

It has been suggested that it was around this time that Singh was first recruited by the CIA.

According to multiple reports in Indian media, Singh's daughter was seriously injured in 1992 or 1993, and he requested a transfer to Washington DC. 

"Singh said he needed a lot of money to pay for his daughter's treatment, and that the Washington posting would help,"  RL Bhatia, the minister involved in external state affairs at the time, told Frontline in 2004 .

The request was declined. Instead, after Damascus, Singh was stationed as a counsellor at The Hague.

Colleagues noted his expensive tastes and penchant for throwing lavish dinner parties at five-star hotels where he mingled with senior officers and foreign diplomats.

"Everybody in R&AW knew that he had acquired disproportionate assets to his known sources of income, but no-one dared to take any action against him due to his allegiance with a coterie of senior officers," Yadav wrote.

"He openly used to claim in cocktail circles that he was the richest bureaucrat of India, but no-one in R&AW had the guts to question the source of his richness and lavish style of living."

By the early 2000s Singh had returned to New Delhi, and was working as a joint secretary at R&AW headquarters focused on its South-East Asia operations.

But the man described by his peers as a "fairly ordinary" agent was hiding a secret.

The double agent arouses suspicion

Some time in late 2003, Singh's colleagues began to notice he had become particularly inquisitive, striking up conversations about topics outside his department's purview and spending an unusual amount of time at the photocopier.

One officer approached Bhushan, who at the time was the senior secretary in charge of the Counter Intelligence and Security division that monitored internal threats at R&AW. 

Bhushan began preliminary inquiries, and by the new year, Singh was under surveillance.

Agents installed hidden cameras inside his home and office, tapped his phones and opened a mini control room down the street to monitor the video and audio recordings of Singh's conversations with guests as they came and went.

At one point, Yadav wrote, there were more than 20 agents tracking Singh's every move.

The wire taps seemed to suggest Singh had been collecting intelligence from inside the R&AW and passing it on to an unknown handler believed to be working for the CIA.

The surveillance team were working on the assumption that Singh had somehow been transferring documents through a courier.

But before they could gather enough evidence or catch Singh in the act, he received a tip-off that he was being watched.

"Surveillance is only effective as long as the suspect doesn't know they're being watched. But then once he knows he is being watched, he has power," Bhushan explained in a documentary last year .

Singh applied for leave from work, ostensibly to attend his daughter's engagement ceremony in the United States. The request was turned down, confirming his fears.

According to Yadav's book, tapes from the bugs installed at R&AW headquarters showed Singh desperately ransacking his office in search of hidden cameras — a scene re-created in the film adaptation based on Bhushan's novel.

One morning in April, the counter intelligence team watched as Singh stacked piles of papers into bundles, ready to be squirrelled out of the building. They pounced.

Bhushan directed his officers to frisk every R&AW employee as they left the building.

"Hundreds of classified documents were seized from senior and middle level officers of R&AW being taken out of headquarters," Yadav wrote, including pen drives, CDs and DVDs, and a large volume of pornographic materials.

But still there was not enough to pin down their main target.

The spy who vanished

Singh, now suspicious that counter intelligence agents were tailing him, needed to hatch an escape plan.

Meanwhile, operatives installed a trick photocopier in his office that recorded digital copies of every page he scanned.

Over 16 days, Singh took copies of more than 210 reports, including classified documents that contained sensitive information about R&AW's assessment of activities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and several of its neighbours, according to Yadav.

The investigation appeared to be gathering steam, but senior agents were frustrated that there was still no conclusive evidence that would allow them to question Singh or identify who he was working with.

They were under pressure to arrest their target, or drop it entirely.

Singh took his chance. On May 1, 2004, he and his wife Parminder Kaur made their escape.

They borrowed a car and drove to the border with Nepal, crossing over at Nepalganj, where they were met by Singh's CIA contact , David Vacala.

The three of them stayed the night at a hotel before booking a domestic flight to Kathmandu, where they stayed at the American embassy.

There, Singh and his wife were issued US passports under new names : Ram Prasad Sharma and Deepa Jumar Sharma.

On May 7, the Sharmas boarded an Austrian Airlines flight bound for Washington DC.

After Singh had failed to turn up to work for several days, counter intelligence officers checked city hospitals and interrogated family members about his whereabouts.

A team was dispatched south to Chennai, but found no trace of their man.

They contacted international airports, but hadn't enough evidence to block Singh's passport.

"We came fairly close to understanding that there could be a security implication. But we simply did not have conclusive evidence at that point," a senior source told Outlook India in 2004 .

A search of Singh's home finally delivered the smoking gun they'd been looking for: a laptop that Singh had been using to send electronic copies of his pilfered documents. 

The counter intelligence wing soon figured out his whereabouts, but by the time they contacted the Indian embassy in Kathmandu to try to intercept him, it was too late.

The fallout

Singh was formally dismissed as a R&AW officer in 2005, under an article of India's constitution that allows the president to do so without holding a formal departmental inquiry if it is not considered to be in the national interest.

A senior official at the agency reportedly completed an internal inquiry, but its findings were never made public.

The Indian media was whipped into a frenzy over the "spy who disappeared", and the secrets he may have sold to one of the country's strongest allies.

So what happens to a double agent once they are forced to flee their home base and are cut off from a network of informants?

In Singh's case, it would seem, they become far less valuable.

According to one account, just a few months after he landed state-side, he was dropped by the CIA.

"They stopped paying him, scuppered his attempt at gaining employment with a think tank, and declined to support his request for naturalisation," wrote Shaunak Agarkhedkar, an Indian spy novelist .

In November 2004, a person calling themselves Surender Jeet Singh petitioned the US Court of Appeals to review a decision by the Board of Immigration denying him asylum.

In court documents, he explained that he had been recruited by a CIA-like department in India called the Research and Analysis Wing, to report on individuals believed to have been pushing for a separate state known as Khalistan.

He claimed to have quit the R&AW when "he was ordered to aid in the assassination of a very religious person he had investigated".

Singh told the court that after hiding with friends for a year, he had used his own passport to come to the US, and testified that he would be killed if he returned to India.

The immigration judge denied Singh's asylum request, finding him not credible. In a subsequent appeal, the decision was upheld on the basis that he presented "no corroborative evidence whatsoever" that the R&AW even existed.

The Ninth Circuit Court, however, decided otherwise.

"We can notice that the government of India exists. We can notice that the office of the Prime Minister of India exists. We can notice that a part of the Prime Minister of India's office is the RAW," the judge wrote, referring the matter back to the board of immigration appeals .

While there is no official record of Singh's final asylum application, it appears he was allowed to stay in the country.

India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) — another Indian intelligence agency that runs separately to the R&WA and oversees domestic crimes — had asked Interpol to issue a global arrest warrant for Singh in 2007, but Interpol declined  on the grounds that the charges were political.

That same year, the Indian embassy in Washington confirmed to the New York Times  that Singh and his wife were wanted by the Indian government for violating India's Official Secrets Act.

Media reports have suggested Singh spent several years living as a recluse in New York, Maryland and Virginia, near his extended family, before dying in a road accident in 2016 .

Questions of a cover-up

At the centre of these recountings of the Singh case are a few key questions: why would the US need to spy on India, and how did this agent manage to escape?

Several theories have been floated about what exactly the CIA was hoping to gain from Singh's leaks, ranging from intelligence on terrorist activity among India's closest neighbours, particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan, to evidence of Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction. 

Yadav and others have suggested that the top priority would have been information about India's own nuclear capabilities, after recent failures by US intelligence to anticipate a series of nuclear tests known as the Pokhran-II tests . 

In any case, Bhushan says the documents that Singh did manage to pass on were mostly minor in terms of sensitivity.

While the R&AW never made its internal inquiry public, it did confirm in the wake of the Singh episode that eight of its key operatives had gone missing since the agency was formed in 1968.

The revelation prompted considerable backlash in the community, and questions about the integrity of R&AW's officers and its decisions.

In Yadav's book, as well as granular detail about the Singh case that he says was gathered from internal sources, he made the case that R&AW was in urgent need of reform to address unprofessional behaviour and corruption.

The exact details of what went on inside the R&AW in the months leading up to and directly following Singh's escape are difficult to verify. But Yadav offered the following account.

He believes that many officials were quite happy for Singh to vanish, if he took with him the potential consequences of any further investigation that could point to them as conspirators.

"There is a strong Indian myth that a crow never bites a crow," he wrote.

Yadav wrote that 57 officers of the R&AW were found to have been involved in Singh's deception in some way, according to the suppressed internal inquiry.

He listed the names of 19 employees who he argued were conspirators, having either assisted or allowed Singh to flee the country, or provided information that Singh passed on to the CIA.

Yadav filed a complaint to the CBI asking them to look into the matter. 

The complaint landed in Delhi's High Court, which in 2009 declined to press CBI any further , on the grounds that Yadav had not provided sufficient evidence. 

"Your complete petition is nothing but hearsay. You have no authenticity and without any evidence you are asking us to initiate action against the officers," Chief Justice A P Shah said.

In his book, Yadav explains the lengths he went to in order to compel an official body to take further action against the people he says helped Singh to escape justice. He maintains to this day that he has only ever sought to expose the truth.

"He was chased away. Had [Rabinder Singh] been arrested here, then those officers who shared information with him would have faced court under the official secrets act. Therefore, they made him escape," he told the ABC.

A review of Yadav's book published by the CIA noted that it was "difficult to analyse as it has no footnotes, no end notes, and no bibliography, which means there are no citations from secondary sources, archives, or documents to support the claims".

"The book is strongest when Yadav discusses what he witnessed and experienced, but the sections that contain historical narrative lack independent sources necessary to document the events," the reviewer wrote.

According to Bhushan's version of events, there was corruption at the centre of the Singh case — but only of one man. 

"We have perfect institutions. We have laws, we have rules, we have procedures. What's lacking is people who work within this and implement it," he told the EPIC Channel documentary.

"From what I understand and see in this case, give lure of money to anyone, he gets tempted. Then he doesn't know where to stop. If you don't realise where to stop, you can't come back."

Few former agents have gone on record about what went on at the R&AW.

Retired intelligence officers are now required to seek prior permission from the head of their organisation before publishing any details about the inner workings of government agencies.

One former R&AW officer is currently being sued by the CBI  for allegedly publishing classified information in his 2007 book titled India's External Intelligence - Secrets of Research and Analysis Wing.

For now, those with lingering questions about what really happened to Singh will perhaps turn to the accounts penned by his former colleagues — one that calls itself fact, and the other fiction. 

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Canadian Arrests Highlight Alleged Gang Role in India’s Intelligence Operations

India’s external spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, has long been accused of tapping into criminal networks to carry out operations in South Asia. Is the agency now doing similar operations in the West?

By Mujib Mashal and Suhasini Raj

Reporting from New Delhi

Months after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada accused India’s government of plotting a murder on Canadian soil — plunging diplomatic relations between the two countries to their lowest level ever — the first arrests in the killing, which came on Friday, did little to demystify the basis of his claim.

The police didn’t offer clues or present any evidence that India had orchestrated the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh nationalist leader who was gunned down at the temple he led in Surrey, British Columbia, in June. What they did say was that three Indian men had committed the killing and that an investigation into India’s role was ongoing.

Before the arrests, Indian officials had maintained that Canada was trying to drag New Delhi into what it described as essentially a rivalry between gangs whose members were long wanted for crimes back in India.

After the arrests, a report from the CBC, Canada’s public broadcasting corporation , based on anonymous sources, also said the suspects belonged to an Indian criminal gang.

But analysts and former officials said that the possible role of a gang in the killing does not necessarily mean the Indian government was not involved in the crime.

India’s external spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, has long been suspected of tapping into criminal networks to carry out operations in its immediate neighborhood in South Asia while maintaining deniability.

Canada’s accusation, if proven, that India orchestrated the Nijjar killing — and a similar accusation made soon after by the United States in a different case — may suggest that RAW is now extending its playbook of working with criminals to carry out operations in Western countries, analysts said.

U.S. officials have produced strong evidence in their accusation that an agent of the Indian government participated in a foiled attempt to assassinate a dual American-Canadian citizen. And Canada and allied officials have maintained that Canada has evidence supporting Mr. Trudeau’s claim that Indian agents carried out Mr. Nijjar’s killing.

But the Canadian failure to reveal any evidence that India took part, nine months after Mr. Trudeau’s explosive allegation, leaves the killing of Mr. Nijjar in the realm of accusations and counter-accusation in what is a highly tense political environment in both countries, analysts said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been flexing his muscles as a nationalist strongman, pitching himself during his ongoing campaign for a third-term in office as a protector of India who would go as far as it takes to target security threats.

During speeches, he has boasted about how his government eliminates enemies by “descending in their homes.” While he has made those references in relation to the country’s archenemy — Pakistan — right wing accounts on social media had celebrated the slaying of Mr. Nijjar in Canada as a similar reach of Mr. Modi’s long arm.

Mr. Trudeau, on the other hand, had been facing criticism of weakness in the face of Chinese election interference activities on Canadian soil, and his getting ahead of the Nijjar killing was seen as compensating for that.

Canadian police announced on Friday that they had arrested the three Indian men in Edmonton, Alberta, the same day and charged them with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the killing of Mr. Nijjar. The suspects had been living in Canada for three to five years but were not permanent residents of Canada, the police said.

The gang that the CBC reported that the hit-men are connected to is led by Lawrence Bishnoi, 31, who is accused of several cases of murder, extortion and narcotics trafficking. He has orchestrated much of it from an Indian jail, where he has been held since 2014 . His members are seen as being behind the murder of a popular Punjabi rapper, and threats of attacks on Bollywood celebrities.

Indian security officials have frequently arrested criminals connected to Mr. Bishnoi, often with allegations that the gang’s network stretched as far as Canada and overlapped with those promoting from Canadian soil the cause of Khalistan, a once deeply violent separatist movement with the goal of carving out the Indian state of Punjab as an independent nation.

A large Sikh diaspora resides in Canada, many of them having migrated there after a violent and often indiscriminate crackdown by the Indian government in the 1980s against the movement for an independent Khalistan. While the cause has largely died down inside India, it continues to have supporters among some segments of the diaspora. The Indian government has accused Canada, and several other Western countries, of not doing enough to crack down on the separatists.

Analysts and former security officials said that in India’s immediate geographic neighborhood, RAW has often been willing to venture into murky spaces to recruit killers. Senior officials of Mr. Modi’s administration, including Ajit Doval, the storied former spymaster who now serves as his longtime national security adviser, have in the past been accused of reaching into the underworld to find hit men willing to go after targets both inside the country as well as abroad.

Mr. Bishnoi has demonstrated enormous power from behind bars, even giving a television interview from jail last year to pitch himself as a nationalist warrior rather than a criminal mastermind. That, one former security official said, was a signal of his trying to align himself with the spirit of nationalism for a potential deal.

“I am a nationalist,” Mr. Bishnoi said in that interview. “I am against Khalistan. I am against Pakistan.”

Ajai Sahni, a security analyst who runs the South Asia Terrorism Portal in New Delhi, said the exploitation of criminal gangs by spy agencies to carry out operations with deniability was something that “happens all over the world.”

“It is definitely possible for agencies like RAW to use gang rivalries instead of exposing their own covert operators,” Mr. Sahni added. “But just because that is generally how one would expect it to be done, it doesn’t necessarily mean we know this is exactly the case in Nijjar’s killing.”

The failed plot on American soil had some of the sloppy hallmarks of an agency trying to extend an old playbook into a different, unfamiliar space.

A U.S. indictment in November laid out evidence, including electronic communication and cash transactions between the hired hit man — who turned out to be an undercover cop — a boastful middleman, and an Indian intelligence handler whom The Washington Post recently identified as Vikram Yadav .

The Indian government’s response suggested worry: India’s top diplomat said the action was not government policy, while the government announced an investigation into the matter and promised cooperation with the United States.

Canada’s case has played out very differently. The country has not publicly disclosed any evidence backing up Mr. Trudeau’s claim, even as allied officials said in September that Canadian officials had found a “smoking gun”: intercepted communications of Indian diplomats in Canada indicating involvement in the plot.

Indian officials have pushed back against Mr. Trudeau’s claims with the kind of aggression that suggested it either wasn’t involved or that it was confident of its deniability.

The Indian government expelled Canadian diplomats , and doubled down by putting out a list of individuals on Canadian soil that it said were long wanted as part of what it described as a crime and terror nexus.

Last week, officials in Mr. Modi’s government jumped on scenes of an event that Mr. Trudeau had attended to say it showed his accusations were simply to appease what they say is a Sikh vote bank for him. They pointed to videos of an event where Mr. Trudeau was the chief guest and where chants of “long live Khalistan” were shouted. Mr. Trudeau, in his speech, said he will always be there “to protect your rights and your freedoms, and we will always defend your community against hatred.”

After the speech, the Indian foreign ministry summoned Canada’s second highest ranking diplomat in New Delhi to lodge a complaint.

“His remarks to us illustrates once again the kind of political space that has been given in Canada to separatism, extremism and people who practice violence,” Randhir Jaiswal, the foreign ministry spokesman, said at a news conference.

Mujib Mashal is the South Asia bureau chief for The Times, helping to lead coverage of India and the diverse region around it, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan. More about Mujib Mashal

Suhasini Raj is a reporter based in New Delhi who has covered India for The Times since 2014. More about Suhasini Raj

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• Recently, India’s  Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) completed 53 years in service to the nation.
• Established in 1968, to handle the nation’s international intelligence affairs, RAW came into force after the China-India War in 1962.
• At present, the intelligence arm operates under the aegis of the Prime Minister’s Office.
• RAW provides intelligence support to various significant operations on foreign soil.
• RAW works in cooperation with the Intelligence Bureau or other Indian intelligence agencies.
• After the 1962 China-India war and Indo-Pakistani war in 1965 , India established a separate and distinct external intelligence organization – the Research and Analysis Wing.
•  creation of Bangladesh in 1971, 
• the defeat of Pakistan during the Kargil conflict of 1971, 
• the accession of Sikkim in 1975,
• and the increase of India’s support to Afghanistan.

Working mechanism of RAW  

• RAW collects military, economic, scientific, and political intelligence through covert and overt operations. 
• It also monitors terrorist elements and smuggling rings that transport weapons and ammunition into India.
• It primarily focuses on India’s neighbours. The collected inputs by RAW also help Indian officials, which are further used in national security policy and revise the foreign policy.

Attached Bodies

• The Aerial Reconnaissance Centre (ARC) collects high-quality overhead imagery of activities and installations in neighbouring countries.
• Special Frontier Force:

The inspector general of a paramilitary force of India, the Special Frontier Force reports to the director-general of security for RAW. While the force has functions independent of RAW, it is often fielded to support covert and overt RAW missions.

Source: AIR                                      

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Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of India: History, Purpose & Challenges

From its inception, RAW embraced unconventional methods, often relying on deception, misinformation, and audacious covert operations to achieve its objectives.

Table of Contents

Moto: controversial, multifaceted mandate: safeguarding india’s interests, disintegration of pakistan, ravindra kaushik, afghanistan, controlling kashmir insurgency, challenges and controversy of shadows, future imperatives: adapting to a changing world, conclusion: silent guardian stands watch.

In the realm of international espionage, shrouded in secrecy and whispered legends, operates India’s enigmatic intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). 

Established in 1968, RAW stands as a sentinel,safeguarding the nation’s security through meticulous intelligence gathering, daring covert operations, and unwavering counter-terrorism efforts. 

To delve into the world of RAW is to embark on a thrilling journey through the shadows, where unseen hands shape global events and national destinies hang in the balance.

Genesis of RAW: Brahmanical Imprint?

Foreign intelligence failure during the 1962 Sino-Indian War led then-Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to order a dedicated foreign intelligence agency to be established.

However Nehru died in 1964 and later Indira Gandhi (Nehru’s daughter) government decided to create a full-fledged intelligence agency based on the blueprint submitted by Rameshwar Nath Kao, then a deputy director of the Intelligence Bureau. Kao was subsequently also appointed as the first chief of RAW.

RN Kao was born in Varanasi on 10 May 1918 to a Kashmiri Brahmin family who migrated from Srinagar district of Jammu and Kashmir. He was brought up by his uncle Pandit Trilokinath Kao. From 1989, Kao dedicated his time largely to the task of restoring the dignity and honour of the Kashmiri Pandits .

The Motto of RAW is Dharmo Rakshati Rakshitah a Sanskrit phrase from Manusmriti which means “ Dharma protect those who protect it ”. Does it mean that the purpose of RAW is to protect the Dharma (birth based occupational duties determined by the Caste or Varna System) as envisioned in Manusmriti and other Brahmanical scriptures like Bhagavad Gita .

For the unversed, Manusmriti is a controversial Brahmanical book symbolically burnt by BR Ambedkar , the architect of India’s constitution to liberate vast majority of Bahujan classes (OBCs, SCs & STs) from Brahmanical oppressions.

With respect to this Dharma, Bhagavad Gita in chapter 3 verse 35 says that one should rather die discharging their prescribed Dharma (caste determined duties) faultly, than discharging other’s prescribed duties perfectly as it has extremely dangerous consequences.

श्रेयान्स्वधर्मो विगुण: परधर्मात्स्वनुष्ठितात् | स्वधर्मे निधनं श्रेय: परधर्मो भयावह: || 3:35||

It is far better to perform one’s natural prescribed duty, though tinged with faults, than to perform another’s prescribed duty, though perfectly. In fact, it is preferable to die in the discharge of one’s duty, than to discharge other’s prescribed duties as it has extremely dangerous consequences.   3:35

श्रेयान्स्वधर्मो विगुण: परधर्मात्स्वनुष्ठितात् | स्वभावनियतं कर्म कुर्वन्नाप्नोति किल्बिषम् || 18:47||

It is better to do one’s own prescribed occupational duties, even though imperfectly, than to do another’s prescribed occupational duties, even though perfectly. By doing one’s innate duties, a person does not incur sin. 18:47

There are certain other elite Brahminical ideas that makes it extremely dangerous for human fraternity and equality. These include philosophies like-

• Aham Brahmasmi (I am God): Through this elite and Brahmanical classes justify all they do thinking themselves to be God leading to a system devoid of any remorse, responsibility and accountability. Perhaps, this is the reason they never apologised for the caste atrocities.
• Sam Daam Dand Bhed (Lets prevail over others by any hook or crook): Interestingly, mighty empires and dynasts based on this philosophy still crumbled as Holy Quran says “ They plan and plot and God also plans and the God is the best amongst planners ”.
• Advaita Vedanta (Creator and Creation are one and same): This legalizes idol worship , ritualism, etc as a wholesale religious cooperative with Brahmins at the helm; also prevents unity and liberation of masses engulfed in endless religious jargon and superstitions.

All of the above is well reflected in working styles of RAW which since its inception embraced unconventional methods, often relying on deception, misinformation, targeted killings & assassinations and audacious covert operations to achieve its objectives.

According to noted  constitutional  law scholar  Rajeev Bhargava “It [Brahmanism] is a sociopolitical ideology that encodes a memory of an ideal past and a vision of society in the future, one in which Brahmins occupy the highest place not only as exclusive guardians of a higher, spiritual realm but also as sole providers of wisdom on virtually every practical issue of this world. They possess superior knowledge of what a well-ordered society is and how a good state must be run. More importantly, their superior position in society and their superior knowledge stems from birth. This makes them naturally, intrinsically superior to all other humans, so superior that they form a separate species (  jati  ) altogether. Nothing can challenge or alter this fact. No one becomes a Brahmin, but is born so. This sociopolitical ideology makes hierarchy necessary, rigid and irreversible. Brahmanism then is the most perfect form of conservatism, a status-quoist ideology par excellence, entirely suitable to elites who wish to perpetuate their social status, power and privilege. Paradoxically, this is the also the reason why it spread everywhere in India and beyond and why it endures: regardless of your religio-philosphical world view, if you are a privileged elite, you would find this ideology irresistible.”

وَمَكَرُوْا وَمَكَرَ اللّٰهُ ؕ وَاللّٰهُ خَیْرُ الْمٰكِرِیْنَ And they plan. God also has planned and God is the best of planners. Holy Quran 3:54

RAW’s primary functions encompass a vast spectrum. Gathering foreign intelligence on matters concerning national security, thwarting and infiltrating terrorist networks, and safeguarding India’s strategic interests abroad are at the core of its mandate. 

The agency’s tentacles reach far and wide, from monitoring foreign governments and militant groups to conducting covert operations to disrupt potential threats before they materialize.

R&AW maintains active liaison with other agencies and services in various countries. Those agencies include SVR of Russia, Afghanistan’s NDS, Israel’s Mossad, Germany’s BND, the CIA and MI6 have been well-known, a common interest being Pakistan’s nuclear programme

A Legacy of Triumph: RAW’s Pivotal Moments

One of RAW’s most celebrated successes lies in its crucial role during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. 

Through covert operations and tactical support to Mukti Bahini rebels, RAW played a pivotal role in dismantling Pakistan’s Eastern wing and paving the way for Bangladesh’s independence. This operation cemented RAW’s reputation as a formidable force in the world of international espionage.

R&AW’s most successful spy Ravindra Kaushik spied in Pakistan in the 1970s. Ravindra Kaushik was born in Sri Ganganagar, Rajasthan on 11 April 1952 in Brahmin family. His father, JM Kaushik, was an Indian Air Force officer.

Kaushik was trained in Delhi for two years to be an undercover Operative in Pakistan. He was also trained to live life as a Muslim and was taught the Urdu language.

Kaushik converted to Islam, underwent circumcision and was given the cover name “Nabi Ahmed Shakir”.

After successfully getting admission in Karachi University, he completed his LL.B. After his graduation, joined Pakistan Army as a commissioned officer and was eventually promoted to the rank of major. He married a local girl named Amaanat and fathered a boy, who died in 2012–2013.

From 1979 to 1983, Kaushik worked as a Pakistani army officer, sending valuable information to India’s R&AW. He was given the title of ‘Black Tiger’ by the Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi.

However, in September 1983, Kaushik was caught & captured by ISI and tortured for two years at an interrogation center in Sialkot. He was sentenced to death in 1985; his sentence was later commuted to a life term by the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

He managed to secretly send letters to his family in India, which revealed his poor health and the trauma he faced in Pakistani jails. In one of his letters, he wrote:

Kya Bharat jaise bade desh ke liye kurbani dene waalon ko yahi milta hai?” (Is this what people who sacrifice their lives for a big country like India get?)

In November 2001, he died of pulmonary tuberculosis and heart disease in Central Jail Mianwali in Pakistan. According to Ravindra’s family, the Indian government had refused to recognise him and had made no effort to help him.

During the Soviet War in Afghanistan, R&AW had recruited three powerful warlords, including Ahmad Shah Massoud.

In 1996, R&AW had built a 25-bed military hospital at the Farkhor Air Base. This airbase was used by the Aviation Research Centre, the reconnaissance arm of R&AW, to repair and operate the Northern Alliance’s aerial support. This relationship was further cemented in the 2001 Afghan war.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, R&AW provided the intelligence to western countries that there were over 120 training camps operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan, run by a variety of militant groups .

On 15 June 2023, Avtar Singh Khanda, the UK-based chief of the Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF) was suddenly admitted to the hospital with a case of blood cancer, and later died. His followers in the UK believe that Indian intelligence had him poisoned and are demanding the full medical report.

On 19 June 2023, Hardeep Singh Nijjar , a prominent Khalistani leader and alleged chief of the Khalistan Tiger Force was shot to death outside the parking lot of Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia.

This was heavily seen as an R&AW assassination operation by not only followers of Nijjar, but also from Canadian officials.

On 18 September 2023, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau formally accused the Indian government of the killing and acknowledged the expulsion of a prominent Indian diplomat responsible for R&AW activities in the country.

Operation Chanakya also marked the creation of pro-Indian groups in Kashmir like the Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen, Muslim Mujahideen etc.

These counter-insurgencies consist of ex-militants and relatives of those slain in the conflict. Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen leader Kokka Parrey was himself assassinated by separatists.

In 1998, Mirza Dilshad Beg, a Nepalese parliamentarian and an ISI informant was assassinated by R&AW.

Assassination of Raju Pargai & Amit Arya was shot in 2011, who was running Mirza Dilshad Beg entire network in Uttarakhand.

In 2015, it was allegedly reported by the Sri Lankan newspaper The Sunday Times, that R&AW had played a role in uniting the opposition, to bring about the defeat of Mahinda Rajapaksa . There had been growing concern in the Indian government, on the increasing influence of economic and military rival China in Sri Lankan affairs.

From its inception R&AW has been criticised for being an agency not answerable to the people of India (R&AW reports to Prime Minister only) . Fears arose that it could turn into the KGB of India.

The main controversy which has plagued R&AW in recent years is over bureaucratisation of the system with allegations about favouritism in promotions, corruption, ego clashes, no financial accountability, inter-departmental rivalry, etc .

Noted security analyst and former Additional Secretary B. Raman has criticised the agency for its asymmetric growth; “ while being strong in its capability for covert action it is weak in its capability for intelligence collection, analysis and assessment. Strong in low and medium-grade intelligence, weak in high-grade intelligence. Strong in technical intelligence, weak in human intelligence . Strong in collation, weak in analysis. Strong in investigation, weak in prevention. Strong in crisis management, weak in crisis prevention. “

Over the years, RAW has faced numerous challenges, navigating the treacherous terrain of Cold War politics, tackling the rise of global terrorism, and countering internal threats. From the hijacking of IC-814 in 1999 to the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008, RAW has been at the forefront of India’s response to these crises, often operating under immense pressure and public scrutiny.

Despite its successes, RAW remains shrouded in an aura of mystery . Its operations are rarely acknowledged, and its agents operate under assumed identities, their sacrifices often unsung . 

The veil of secrecy surrounding the agency is both necessary and controversial. While it allows RAW to operate with impunity and effectiveness, it also fuels speculation and accusations of human rights violations and illegal activities.

However, one aspect of RAW’s operations remains undeniable: its unwavering commitment to India’s national security.

From its role in securing India’s nuclear program to its covert operations against terrorist networks, RAW has played a crucial role in shaping India’s position on the global stage.

Looking ahead, RAW faces new challenges in the form of cyber warfare, rising regional tensions, and the ever-evolving landscape of global terrorism. 

The agency must adapt its methods, embrace technological advancements, and continue to recruit and train the best minds in the country to safeguard India’s future.

The Research and Analysis Wing stands as a testament to India’s resolve and strategic prowess. 

As the world grapples with an increasingly complex geopolitical landscape, RAW’s role as India’s silent guardian becomes even more vital.

While its operations may remain shrouded in secrecy, its impact on India’s national security is undeniable. 

The veiled eye of RAW continues to watch, ensuring that India stands tall amidst the shadows of the international stage.

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How To Join RAW India (Research And Analysis Wing)

• February 28, 2024
• 180 Comments

Have you ever wondered how to join RAW and become part of India’s elite external intelligence agency? The Research and Analysis Wing, commonly referred to by its acronym RAW, stands as the forefront of ensuring national security, engaging in critical operations that safeguard India from external threats. Since its inception in 1968, RAW has evolved to become a pivotal player in India’s strategic interests, handling tasks that range from gathering political and military intelligence to performing anti-terror operations.

For individuals who aspire to serve their country in a capacity that transcends conventional frontiers, understanding the full form of RAW, its significant role in protecting India’s security interests, and the agency’s remarkable history, including its role in the formation of Bangladesh and its strategies during the Kargil War, is an essential first step. Raw India’s exploits resonate not just within our nation’s borders but have echoed across continents, influencing global geopolitical landscapes.

Embarking on a journey to join RAW demands a comprehensive grasp of the agency’s meticulous recruitment and training process. Our article aims to shed light on the eligibility criteria you must meet and the precise steps you need to undertake to be considered for a role as a RAW agent.

As a trusted beacon for defense aspirants, we recognize your ambition to rise above the ordinary and we strive to mentor you on how to become a RAW agent, uncovering details such as the RAW agent salary and career progression within the agency. Joining RAW is not just about harnessing skills; it’s about embodying a sense of purpose that aligns with national pride and duty.

We will navigate through each phase—from the recruitment process to the rigorous training that shapes exceptional RAW agents—ensuring that your pursuit of joining RAW, India’s esteemed intelligence ward, is illuminated with clarity and ambition. Let us inspire and equip you with all you need to realize your potential and embark on a career marked by valor and intelligence, synonymous with RAW’s legacy of excellence.

Understanding RAW and Its Function

As we delve into the essence of RAW, India’s premier intelligence agency, it’s pivotal to comprehend its core functions and the magnitude of its operations. Established in 1968, under the aegis of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, RAW’s inception was a strategic move to bolster India’s intelligence capabilities, particularly in foreign territories. The full form of RAW, which stands for Research and Analysis Wing, encapsulates its mission to conduct research and analysis that is critical to the nation’s safety and strategic interests.

Key Objectives and Functions of RAW:

• Monitoring Developments:  RAW’s primary mandate involves keeping a vigilant eye on political, military, economic, and scientific advancements in countries that could impact India’s security. This surveillance is crucial in preempting any threats and formulating strategic responses.
• Counter-Terrorism:  The agency is at the forefront of tracking terrorist factions and disrupting smuggling networks that funnel illicit arms into the country, thereby fortifying India’s defense against internal and external threats.
• Covert Operations:  RAW agents are trained to execute covert operations with the aim to safeguard India’s national interests. These operations are often shrouded in secrecy but are vital in maintaining the country’s sovereignty and security.

Notable Achievements and Structure:

• Historical Impact:  The agency has been instrumental in several key operations, including the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971 and the integration of Sikkim in 1975, showcasing its pivotal role in shaping India’s geopolitical narrative.
• Direct Reporting:  Unlike other intelligence bodies, RAW maintains a direct reporting line to the Prime Minister, facilitated through the Joint Intelligence Committee, ensuring swift and confidential communication of sensitive information.
• Organizational Hierarchy:  At the structural core, RAW is comprised of the Office of Special Operations, Additional Secretaries, and a dedicated Aviation and Special Services division, all collaborating to fulfill the agency’s expansive mission.

Challenges and Operational Reach:

• Equipment and Manpower:  Despite being ranked among the top five intelligence agencies globally, RAW faces significant challenges, such as a severe staff shortage, with an estimated 40% deficit in personnel as of 2013.
• Strategic Bureaus:  The agency extends its intelligence network through 10 field formations, known as Special Bureaus, strategically positioned in major cities near India’s borders, to gather vital intelligence from neighboring nations.
• Military Hardware Control:  A significant aspect of RAW’s objectives includes monitoring and curtailing the flow of military hardware to Pakistan, predominantly sourced from the United States, China, and Europe, thereby maintaining a balance of power in the region.

In our pursuit of understanding how to join RAW and the full form of RAW, we recognize that aspiring RAW agents must align with the agency’s unwavering commitment to national security. With this knowledge of RAW India, we can appreciate the gravity and prestige associated with becoming a RAW agent. As we continue our exploration, we will uncover the steps on how to become a RAW agent, the raw agent salary, and the profound career paths that lie ahead for those who dare to dream of serving their nation at the highest level of intelligence and valor.

Eligibility Criteria for Joining RAW

Embarking on the esteemed journey to join RAW, India’s premier intelligence agency, necessitates meeting a set of stringent eligibility criteria. These prerequisites are designed to ensure that only the most capable and dedicated individuals are entrusted with the responsibility of safeguarding our nation’s security and interests. As aspirants like you seek to understand how to become a RAW agent, it is imperative to familiarize yourself with the fundamental requirements:

• Must be an Indian citizen.
• Should have a clean record with no criminal background or pending court cases.
• A graduation degree from a recognized university is mandatory.
• Proficiency in at least one foreign language is highly beneficial.
• Candidates often emerge from esteemed positions within the Civil Services, having cleared the rigorous Civil Service Exam, including roles in the IAS, IPS, or IRS.
• Recruitment also extends to meritorious individuals from Indian armed forces such as the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
• Individuals with significant experience, typically more than 20 years in service, are preferred.
• Lateral deputation is another pathway, targeting the Officers Corps of Armed Forces or Group A Civil Service Officers.
• While the exact age limit is not officially specified, candidates are generally expected to be between 25-45 years old.
• Physical fitness is paramount, given the demanding nature of RAW operations.
• Exceptional communication skills are essential for the role of a RAW agent.

As a RAW agent, you will be at the vanguard of defending national security, acquiring critical foreign intelligence, and combating terrorism. You will also play a pivotal role in influencing foreign governments and shaping public opinion globally. The raw agent salary and career trajectory reflect the high stakes and significant responsibilities of the position. With the full form of RAW symbolizing the Research and Analysis Wing, your alignment with the agency’s mission and your adherence to these eligibility criteria will be the first step in your journey towards joining RAW India’s cadre of elite intelligence professionals.

The Recruitment Process

Embarking on the path to join RAW, the Research and Analysis Wing of India, is a journey of meticulous selection and dedication. As we continue to explore how to join RAW, we now focus on the recruitment process, which is as strategic and discerning as the operations of RAW itself.

• Aspirants must first clear the UPSC Civil Services Exam, which is the gateway for various civil services in India, including the IPS and IFS, from which RAW often recruits.
• The full form of RAW stands for precision and excellence, and thus, the agency selects candidates based on stellar performance in the UPSC Exam and their adherence to the eligibility criteria.
• Direct Recruitment at the Class I executive level occurs from civil services officers who are undergoing the Foundation Course at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA).
• RAW agents, including most secretaries, have historically been officers from the IPS, with other posts being held by officers from the IFS and IRS.
• The selection process for RAW agents intensifies with interviews and psychological assessments conducted at the end of the LBSNAA Foundation Course to identify candidates with the right aptitude for intelligence work.
• Shortlisted candidates are then inducted to work at RAW India for a one-year period, during which their performance and adaptability to the intelligence culture are evaluated.

Eligibility and Preparation :

• Nationality and Legal Standing : Candidates must be unwaveringly loyal Indian citizens, with a clean legal record, free of any criminal background or pending court cases.
• Educational and Age Requirements : A graduation degree from a reputed institution is essential, and candidates must be less than 56 years of age, with a requisite number of years’ experience in government service.
• Language and Skills : Proficiency in at least one foreign language is highly beneficial, reflecting the global operational reach of RAW agents.

By understanding the full form of RAW and aligning with the agency’s mission, you can prepare to navigate the challenging recruitment process. Remember, the raw agent salary is commensurate with the high-stakes and significant responsibilities that come with the role. As you contemplate how to become a RAW agent, keep in mind the dedication and commitment required to serve India’s premier intelligence agency.

Training of RAW Agents

Embarking on the rigorous journey to become a part of RAW, India’s esteemed intelligence agency, involves a meticulously structured training regimen designed to hone a wide array of skills necessary for the multifaceted role of a RAW agent. We aim to provide insights into the comprehensive training process that each aspirant undergoes, reinforcing the commitment to excellence synonymous with the full form of RAW – Research and Analysis Wing.

Basic Training Curriculum

Upon selection, trainees are initiated into the world of intelligence with a robust basic training module that spans various critical areas:

• Espionage Techniques : Trainees are introduced to the art of real-world espionage, learning the nuances of clandestine operations and information gathering.
• Technological Proficiency : Space technology and information security form the backbone of modern intelligence; hence, aspirants are equipped with cutting-edge scientific knowledge.
• Analytical Acumen : A strong emphasis is placed on financial, economic, and geo-strategic analysis to develop the analytical prowess needed for high-stakes decision-making.
• Case Studies : Learning from past successes and failures, trainees study detailed case studies of other intelligence agencies to understand the dynamics of global intelligence work.

Advanced Training: Field Intelligence Bureau (FIB)

After mastering the basics, trainees advance to the Field Intelligence Bureau training, which is an intensive 1-2 year program focusing on:

• Survival Skills : Agents are trained to survive in the most hostile environments, ensuring their readiness for any situation.
• Covert Operations : Mastery in secret operation management, including infiltration and exfiltration techniques, is imparted to handle sensitive missions.
• Interrogation Resistance : Trainees learn to resist and manage interrogation scenarios, a critical skill for maintaining operational integrity.
• Operational Execution : From contact management to mission operation, agents are equipped to execute complex intelligence tasks with precision.

Pathway to Permanent Selection

The journey from trainee to a full-fledged RAW agent is marked by a series of evaluations and choices:

• Initial Induction : Candidates selected through RAS or direct recruitment at the Class 1 Executive Level undergo a year of intensive training, during which their compatibility with intelligence work is assessed.
• Optional Reintegration : At the end of the first year, trainees have the option to return to their parent service, allowing for a reevaluation of their commitment to RAW India’s mission.
• Final Selection : Those who exhibit unwavering dedication and exceptional skill are permanently inducted into the Research and Analysis Service, ready to embark on a career filled with challenges and triumphs.

Throughout the training, the raw agent salary reflects the high stakes and rigorous nature of the work. As you deliberate on how to join RAW and how to become a RAW agent, it’s clear that the path is not easy, but for those who are determined, it’s a journey of transformation into an intelligence professional of the highest caliber. The full form of RAW is a testament to the comprehensive education and preparation that each agent receives, ensuring their readiness to protect and serve with intelligence, valor, and an unwavering sense of duty.

Career Path and Roles in RAW

Embarking on a career with RAW India, the full form of RAW being Research and Analysis Wing, opens up a spectrum of roles that are pivotal to the nation’s security. Here, we outline the career path and roles within RAW, providing a roadmap for aspirants like you, who are seeking to understand how to join RAW and become integral to India’s intelligence framework.

Career Path in RAW

• The journey begins with selection into an elite government job such as IAS or IPS, followed by a national aptitude test in intelligence and psychology, and an interview process.
• Successful candidates are recruited through the Research and Analysis Service (RAS) cadre, part of the Central Staffing Scheme, and undergo a one-year training period to assimilate into RAW’s culture and operations.
• Senior Roles : Secretary/Additional Secretary (R), Joint Secretary
• Mid-level Roles : Director/Deputy Secretary/Attache
• Operational Roles : Senior Field Officer, Field Officer, Deputy Field Officer, Assistant Field Officer
• Advancement through these ranks is contingent on performance, dedication, and the successful execution of missions.
• RAW officials receive the opportunity for international training, equipping them with global intelligence perspectives and operational techniques, which are crucial for RAW agents working in diverse geopolitical landscapes.

Roles and Responsibilities in RAW

• Foreign Intelligence Gathering : As a RAW agent, you will be at the forefront of collecting sensitive information from foreign lands, which is critical for shaping India’s foreign policy and strategic decisions.
• Counter-Terrorism Operations : RAW agents play a decisive role in thwarting terrorism, ensuring the safety of India’s populace and its sovereign interests.
• Policy Advisory : Leveraging the intelligence gathered, RAW agents provide invaluable insights to policymakers, influencing decisions at the highest levels of government.
• Nuclear Security : A RAW agent’s role extends to securing India’s nuclear program, a task of profound national importance.

Maintaining Integrity and Performance

• Performance Review : RAW agents are consistently evaluated for their performance. Those who excel are rewarded with progression, while those who do not meet the standards may face forced retirement.
• Integrity Assurance : The integrity of a RAW agent is paramount. Any doubts regarding an agent’s loyalty or conduct can lead to termination, ensuring the agency remains uncompromised.

As you consider how to join RAW and how to become a RAW agent, it’s clear that the path is demanding yet rewarding. The raw agent salary and benefits are reflective of the high-stakes nature of the work. With RAW India, you are not just choosing a job; you are committing to a lifestyle of vigilance, patriotism, and excellence. Your role within RAW will be instrumental in shaping the security narrative of the nation, and as such, every step of your career will be marked by the pursuit of brilliance and an unwavering dedication to the service of India.

Some of the known activities and operations of RAW are as follows:

• ELINT operations aimed at China
• Bangladesh liberation and aftermath
• Operation Smiling Buddha
• Amalgamation of Sikkim
• Kahuta’s Blueprint
• Operation Lal Dora
• Operation Meghdoot
• Kanishka Bombing case
• Special Operations
• Operation Cactus
• Operations in Sri Lanka
• Anti-Apartheid Movement
• Operation Chanakya
• Overthrowing monarchy in Nepal
• Help to the Northern Alliance
• Operation Leech
• War on Terror
• 2008 Mumbai attacks
• Snatch operations with IB
• 2015 Sri Lankan presidential election

Different Job Roles (Designations )  in RAW

1. What is the process to become an agent in RAW India?

To pursue a career as a RAW agent, candidates must first clear the Combined Graduate Preliminary Exam (CGPE) conducted by the Staff Selection Commission (SSC). Subsequently, they need to qualify for the ‘Group A’ Civil Services exam under the Central Staffing Scheme and excel in all stages of the Civil Service examination.

2. Is it possible to join RAW without taking the UPSC exams?

Direct recruitment into RAW is not available; therefore, candidates must go through the UPSC (Union Public Service Commission) examination process.

3. Where is the headquarters of RAW located in India?

The headquarters of RAW is situated in New Delhi, which serves as the capital of India and is part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. New Delhi is also the administrative hub for all three branches of the Government of India.

4. What is India’s primary secret intelligence agency?

India’s main foreign intelligence agency is the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW).

5. How challenging is it to work for RAW?

Working as a RAW agent is not an easy task; it demands significant hard work, dedication, and a rigorous training process.

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Raw join sirf marne k liye nahi karna hai marne k liye v karna hai

Sir please I want join your intelligence agency RAW please it’s my dream 7388853082

Alpha… 11

I want to join but I am unde age

What I can do. But I not understand study Help me 9955142968 is my mobile no.

मैं raw के साथ मिलकर अपना जीवन भारत माता कि सेवा में न्योछावर करना चाहता हूं, जिसके लिए मैं कुछ भी कर सकता हूँ, बोलता कम करता ज्यादा हु, 9958579605 पुनीत त्यागी

Proud to India …because handling good agents

Sir I want to join RAW. please give me one chance

Sir I want to join RAW. please give me one chance My contact no 6205014270

Sir / medam please give me one chance Please….. Please….. you can believe me (9509654426)9694961612 whatsapp no..

Sir me paralekha ney hu 1o class faild . Mey deska lia morsaktha hu marbisaktha hu

सर मुझे भरती होना है

im 10th feyl but raw intraest meshance i dont like many

My name faizan from Pakistan RAW contact me

Sir please give me a chance I want to do something for my country . I want to become a RAW agent . Contact no. 7008457418

Hello Sir My name is pratik roy i reside in kolkata I am interested to join raw I have a working experience for 5 years also graduated from sikkim manipal university,also holding diploma on bhagavad gita,currently I serve for the present government in political term as a recruiter,also holding shares of ongc a central government unit, please me to join the field.

I am not interested in Raw ajent but i am interested in work for Raw 🙏

{ [ °▪ ] } ¿

^ DECODE IT

I have a pagal on Raw

Yr yeh raw mai join hone ke liye officers q hona chahiye study mai jiska interest nhi hai ky vo sirf ish wajah se raw join nhi kr skta bull shit hai yeh rule I thought raw. Mai bahut capable person he allowed hote hai I agree but Sare capable person kisi exam ko crack krke officer ban kr he bane yeh logic nhi think about it

M nalayak hu

Raw is bast

सर,मैं रॉ में सेवा देना चाहता हूं ,अगर आप मुझे एक मौका दें।

Sir mujhe Raw me one chance de Mey apne body me bam lagakar Pakistan army ko uara dunga Sir please mujhe Raw bana lo Mera mob no-6209669421 Please one chance Jay hind

Sir I want to join RAW. please give me one chance My contact no8141874441

JOINING R A W

I fick pak & china

18 15 3 11 20 9 13 11 1 12 9 20 1 2019 @ 7 13 1 9 12. 3 15 13……….

10 21 19 20 , 19 13 1 13 1 9 12 …….

Hello sir mujhe aapse kuch personal important baat karni hai

9081660366 mare desh mate shahid thavanu se

I want to join raw…

All right atamt

I m interested in RAW or IB I m doing govt job in state education department as a teacher

Sir m RAW me join hona chahta hu… Wese b meri zindagi ka koi mtlb ni h bss ek bar chance de de sir mera no. (8059155046) h

Hello sir! I want to join RAW. Please give me one chance for it. I will prove . I am the best.

Hello sir! I want to join RAW. Please give me one chance for it. I will prove that i am the best..

I join raw sir

How to get direct interview in raw

Sir muje apni country ke liye raw join karna hai I love my India and my dream raw

I proud my country and I proud RAW service in entire world.to save from threats and then I wan to join raw but don’t there will be direct recruit.any way I love to service my country been a raw service Jai Hind Jai Bharat Jai Hind Jai Bharat

Sir I am joining RAW PLEASE GUIDE

I know i’m a normal boy i can’t do anything for you i want to do something for the country i want to join the night if you are my education maybe not so much if you have a little please i think i can give my best to you Take a look

Sir mujhe bhi raw me Jake Apne country Ka Raksha karna hai dharmo rakhshiti rakhshiti

agent pump fromIndian Seva in my Bharat in. give me please opportunity.

sir i am a hacker i join the raw beacuse i stong my country batter than other country

I want to join RAW vary seriously… From Garo Hills, Meghalaya

पागल तो मैं भी हूं सर RAW join करने के लि‌‌ए पर कितना हूं एक नहीं बता सकता.! Search me जय हिंद !

I like danger

सर मैं Raw join करना चाहता हूं।

I am seriously join raw, and work for raw. Plz help me… And give a change sir

Im join raw

I heartedly interested to work raw. Please give me a chance sir….

Give me raw job,I know everyone say please give me chance but “and give you contact no but I don’t ,find me if you can.

Sir I want join RAW I WANT WORK for my country My peoples

Sir I want to join RAW sir I am very interested to join I am from Jammu and Kashmir poonch

I love my country

Sir, I want to join the row sir plz search me

Sir, I want to join the row sir plz muja appni jindgi sa koi mitlb nhi pay vi nhi chyia muja bs jindgi ma kuj asha krna chayta hu sir mra number 6280087177 call me sir sir app ka call ki wait kro ga call me sir

It’s take a next level of responsibility

Hello Sir,I m not going to discuss about my love towards my Nation India bt I m going to tell uh one big thing is that first save the nation by some people who are living in india bt lives for other countries….I have a few information about some people through my source who are stealing information at Raw nd NIA ….plz contact me sir ….8809940282

I want to beacome a advisor of international relations of India. Now I’m Purisung M. A POL SCI SO what should I do sir

RAW MA Join hoha marA Dream H! Sir My Countri K. liya Kam KARANA chan

I couldn’t clear NDA, CDS but fire is still in me for the nation for force way of life. currently, I preparing for UPSC. i have learned boxing, I’m a linguistic person, I’m good at acting .qualification 10th from Christian missionary, 12th science. B.A . in politics. Family background ‘0’. So, I have decided to join Research and Analysis wings.or CApf.

हेलो सर मैं आपना नाम नहीं बता सकता पर मैं RAW में शामिल होना चाहता हूं

Sir I am Retd from Corps of signals on 30 Apr 2021 after completion of 30 year service . My trade is (OSS) Yeoman of signals intelligence.I have more experience to Analysis and interception our target country and internally trts activity . I served in j&k 18 years 06 years in north east . Two decoration has received . I have interested same platform to lead and improve ndian security. Pls guide me and give me chance thx

मेरी मौत बहुत नजदीक है पर मरना तो है लेकिन देश के लिए नोकरी नहीं करनी है वो तो कहीं भी मिल जाएगी पर मुझे जो चाहिए वो देश के लिए त्याग करने पर मिलेगा वो नाम जो हर किसी को नहीं मिलता शहीद मुझे खुफिया एजेंसी सीआईए में शामिल कर लिजिए

sir I am interest in the job this is called a may country My country is my father My country is my mother My country is my sister My country myself is everyone Sir please take me one chance Sir I definitely I am not afraid you Dharma rakshite rakshda Jay hind

i have some information..im silankan local hacker about international information collector…im using this coomment without vpn..this is my original ip address..you can contack me on +94776503500..im glad to join with raw..because i have to work against chineese..thank you..

I am a police man And i served 6 year in pera military force I won’t to join raw .

I want to joint raw and will perform any task which will given by you..

please join for RAW agent in Indian.sir.

5-98, chintalamonu, kallapalem, kalidindi mandalam, Kalidindi, Krishna, Kalidindi Andhra Pradesh, 521344

9273483569 FM

JAI HIND…..RAW WILL APPROACH ME

I am interested in Raw join

Am interested in Raw Intelligence

Jai hind sir I am join to RAW I am GDR

I want to join the raw samant sir please give me one chance

I’m amazed by the number of stupid people commenting and asking the post creator to make them join RAW… Bhai sahab. English dekh ke maut aa rhi hai tum sab ki 😂. A bunch of morons.

Great opportunity, Can we join as agent.

Me tooo Lol

Team Raw, Please give me one chance, M nothing, but m in everything.. Please team give me one chance

I am a proud INDIAN who wants to join RAW and wants to work for my motherland. Thanks

I am a proud INDIAN who wants to join RAW and wants to work for my people. Thanks

Dear sir I am from Imphal ,Manipur where communal clash have been going on since 3rd May, 2023 but still not in silent . This is the act of terrorism which attacked by the Burmese Terrorists to the people of Manipur who are living nearby the Hilly Areas. People are roaming here and there to get shelter. Some are stayed with their relatives and others are in the relief camps opened by the state government. They are facing many problems economically and mentally. Most of their wards are dropped out from the schools. Besides these things, people at the plain areas as well as at the hearth of the city are also facing economical problems as they cannot run their business properly and many organizations are emerged and started donation from the public. Meanwhile some people are trying to get a chance for looting private properties. For the correction of these unfair things I want to join in any of the Central Intelligence service. My contact number is

Dear Sir My contact number is 8787822102

How can i approach for giving an information releated with POK?

I will be glad if i can share this info with R&AW

I will be glad if i can share this with R&AW

research and analysis wing i am join of kolkata partime job I am not interested money

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New Delhi: Lack of language expertise among Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) officers, posted overseas as the “eyes and ears” of India, especially in adversarial states, seems to have become a challenge for the agency, ThePrint has learnt.

Most officers sent overseas, especially to crucial postings such as China, do not know the local language, which affects their work that involves raising and developing human intelligence or building a local connection, sources told ThePrint.

Speaking to ThePrint, a source in the agency accepted this challenge as “real”, but added that knowing a language is not the only thing that is taken into account while making these postings and it is not an “overwhelming factor”.

“Language skills definitely play a role. For instance, someone who knows Mandarin Chinese would be preferred to be posted in China-watching stations. But for someone who doesn’t know the language, the agency has language specialists who are in assisting positions. It, of course, may not be the ideal situation,” the source said.

“The officer who is posted in a country should know his desk well. He should be thorough with the country’s affairs, its history, politics and should be able to anticipate developments,” the source said.

“But of course, if the officer knows the language, it is a big plus, which does not happen very often as there are only few people who actually know the language of the country they are posted in,” the source said.

Also read: Mission Majnu glosses over Morarji Desai’s rumoured ‘resentment’ of R&AW & closeness with Pakistan

‘Raising human intelligence requires language skills’

A former senior officer who worked with the agency, however, stressed on the need for officers to gain language expertise.

Raising human intelligence overseas requires language skills and domain knowledge, something the department must ensure, he said to ThePrint.

“The idea of compensating for the lack of language expertise by having a cadre of linguists is not adequate. Posting an officer overseas without a command over the language is a waste of time, effort and money,” he said.

“Officers may say that it is not essential to one’s posting since there is assistance available, but that is only when the posting is in a country with a friendly foreign agency, not in an adversarial state,” the officer explained.

The officer added that the agency should have professionals equipped both with language skills and domain expertise.

The officer further suggested that for this to happen, the induction into the agency has to be done at an early stage when languages can be learnt.

“The average age of inductions into R&AW for any officer is 38 to 40, when they come on deputation after serving five to eight years in service, an age which makes it difficult to learn languages. This is what needs to be addressed,” the officer said.

A second retired officer said to ThePrint that in such assignments, knowing the language plays a crucial role as it requires public dealing and developing sources.

“You cannot take an interpreter for a personal meeting, if you are meeting an important person. Working with interpreters is a slow and cumbersome process. The best way to go about it is to know the language yourself. If you know the language, it is a big advantage and if you do not, it definitely is a challenge, a drawback,” the officer said.

‘Language just a variable’

An intelligence expert who has also served in the agency, however, told ThePrint that language is a variable, but should not become an “overwhelming factor” for these postings.

“When the postings are done abroad, it is an all-encompassing brief. You are supposed to have an idea of what is happening in that country since you are the eyes and ears of India there and you convey it back home through different channels. It is true and even more important for neighbouring countries but there are several other factors that matter in the success or failure of an officer and language has a limited role to play,” the officer said.

“There is much more to it and this is an oversimplification of the issue,” the officer said.

(Edited by Smriti Sinha)

Also read: PLA media villainises India as Xi inspects LAC troops ahead of Chinese New Year

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When Online Content Disappears

38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible a decade later, table of contents.

• Webpages from the last decade
• Links on government websites
• Links on news websites
• Reference links on Wikipedia
• Posts on Twitter
• Acknowledgments
• Collection and analysis of Twitter data
• Data collection for World Wide Web websites, government websites and news websites
• Data collection for Wikipedia source links
• Evaluating the status of pages and links
• Definition of links

Pew Research Center conducted the analysis to examine how often online content that once existed becomes inaccessible. One part of the study looks at a representative sample of webpages that existed over the past decade to see how many are still accessible today. For this analysis, we collected a sample of pages from the Common Crawl web repository for each year from 2013 to 2023. We then tried to access those pages to see how many still exist.

A second part of the study looks at the links on existing webpages to see how many of those links are still functional. We did this by collecting a large sample of pages from government websites, news websites and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia .

We identified relevant news domains using data from the audience metrics company comScore and relevant government domains (at multiple levels of government) using data from get.gov , the official administrator for the .gov domain. We collected the news and government pages via Common Crawl and the Wikipedia pages from an archive maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation . For each collection, we identified the links on those pages and followed them to their destination to see what share of those links point to sites that are no longer accessible.

A third part of the study looks at how often individual posts on social media sites are deleted or otherwise removed from public view. We did this by collecting a large sample of public tweets on the social media platform X (then known as Twitter) in real time using the Twitter Streaming API. We then tracked the status of those tweets for a period of three months using the Twitter Search API to monitor how many were still publicly available. Refer to the report methodology for more details.

The internet is an unimaginably vast repository of modern life, with hundreds of billions of indexed webpages. But even as users across the world rely on the web to access books, images, news articles and other resources, this content sometimes disappears from view.

A new Pew Research Center analysis shows just how fleeting online content actually is:

• A quarter of all webpages that existed at one point between 2013 and 2023 are no longer accessible, as of October 2023. In most cases, this is because an individual page was deleted or removed on an otherwise functional website.

• For older content, this trend is even starker. Some 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are not available today, compared with 8% of pages that existed in 2023.

This “digital decay” occurs in many different online spaces. We examined the links that appear on government and news websites, as well as in the “References” section of Wikipedia pages as of spring 2023. This analysis found that:

• 23% of news webpages contain at least one broken link, as do 21% of webpages from government sites. News sites with a high level of site traffic and those with less are about equally likely to contain broken links. Local-level government webpages (those belonging to city governments) are especially likely to have broken links.
• 54% of Wikipedia pages contain at least one link in their “References” section that points to a page that no longer exists.

To see how digital decay plays out on social media, we also collected a real-time sample of tweets during spring 2023 on the social media platform X (then known as Twitter) and followed them for three months. We found that:

• Nearly one-in-five tweets are no longer publicly visible on the site just months after being posted. In 60% of these cases, the account that originally posted the tweet was made private, suspended or deleted entirely. In the other 40%, the account holder deleted the individual tweet, but the account itself still existed.
• Certain types of tweets tend to go away more often than others. More than 40% of tweets written in Turkish or Arabic are no longer visible on the site within three months of being posted. And tweets from accounts with the default profile settings are especially likely to disappear from public view.

How this report defines inaccessible links and webpages

There are many ways of defining whether something on the internet that used to exist is now inaccessible to people trying to reach it today. For instance, “inaccessible” could mean that:

• The page no longer exists on its host server, or the host server itself no longer exists. Someone visiting this type of page would typically receive a variation on the “404 Not Found” server error instead of the content they were looking for.
• The page address exists but its content has been changed – sometimes dramatically – from what it was originally.
• The page exists but certain users – such as those with blindness or other visual impairments – might find it difficult or impossible to read.

For this report, we focused on the first of these: pages that no longer exist. The other definitions of accessibility are beyond the scope of this research.

Our approach is a straightforward way of measuring whether something online is accessible or not. But even so, there is some ambiguity.

First, there are dozens of status codes indicating a problem that a user might encounter when they try to access a page. Not all of them definitively indicate whether the page is permanently defunct or just temporarily unavailable. Second, for security reasons, many sites actively try to prevent the sort of automated data collection that we used to test our full list of links.

For these reasons, we used the most conservative estimate possible for deciding whether a site was actually accessible or not. We counted pages as inaccessible only if they returned one of nine error codes that definitively indicate that the page and/or its host server no longer exist or have become nonfunctional – regardless of how they are being accessed, and by whom. The full list of error codes that we included in our definition are in the methodology .

Here are some of the findings from our analysis of digital decay in various online spaces.

To conduct this part of our analysis, we collected a random sample of just under 1 million webpages from the archives of Common Crawl , an internet archive service that periodically collects snapshots of the internet as it exists at different points in time. We sampled pages collected by Common Crawl each year from 2013 through 2023 (approximately 90,000 pages per year) and checked to see if those pages still exist today.

We found that 25% of all the pages we collected from 2013 through 2023 were no longer accessible as of October 2023. This figure is the sum of two different types of broken pages: 16% of pages are individually inaccessible but come from an otherwise functional root-level domain; the other 9% are inaccessible because their entire root domain is no longer functional.

Not surprisingly, the older snapshots in our collection had the largest share of inaccessible links. Of the pages collected from the 2013 snapshot, 38% were no longer accessible in 2023. But even for pages collected in the 2021 snapshot, about one-in-five were no longer accessible just two years later.

We sampled around 500,000 pages from government websites using the Common Crawl March/April 2023 snapshot of the internet, including a mix of different levels of government (federal, state, local and others). We found every link on each page and followed a random selection of those links to their destination to see if the pages they refer to still exist.

Across the government websites we sampled, there were 42 million links. The vast majority of those links (86%) were internal, meaning they link to a different page on the same website. An explainer resource on the IRS website that links to other documents or forms on the IRS site would be an example of an internal link.

Around three-quarters of government webpages we sampled contained at least one on-page link. The typical (median) page contains 50 links, but many pages contain far more. A page in the 90th percentile contains 190 links, and a page in the 99th percentile (that is, the top 1% of pages by number of links) has 740 links.

Other facts about government webpage links:

• The vast majority go to secure HTTP pages (and have a URL starting with “https://”).
• 6% go to a static file, like a PDF document.
• 16% now redirect to a different URL than the one they originally pointed to.

When we followed these links, we found that 6% point to pages that are no longer accessible. Similar shares of internal and external links are no longer functional.

Overall, 21% of all the government webpages we examined contained at least one broken link. Across every level of government we looked at, there were broken links on at least 14% of pages; city government pages had the highest rates of broken links.

For this analysis, we sampled 500,000 pages from 2,063 websites classified as “News/Information” by the audience metrics firm comScore. The pages were collected from the Common Crawl March/April 2023 snapshot of the internet.

Across the news sites sampled, this collection contained more than 14 million links pointing to an outside website. 1 Some 94% of these pages contain at least one external-facing link. The median page contains 20 links, and pages in the top 10% by link count have 56 links.

Like government websites, the vast majority of these links go to secure HTTP pages (those with a URL beginning with “https://”). Around 12% of links on these news sites point to a static file, like a PDF document. And 32% of links on news sites redirected to a different URL than the one they originally pointed to – slightly less than the 39% of external links on government sites that redirect.

When we tracked these links to their destination, we found that 5% of all links on news site pages are no longer accessible. And 23% of all the pages we sampled contained at least one broken link.

Broken links are about as prevalent on the most-trafficked news websites as they are on the least-trafficked sites. Some 25% of pages on news websites in the top 20% by site traffic have at least one broken link. That is nearly identical to the 26% of sites in the bottom 20% by site traffic.

For this analysis, we collected a random sample of 50,000 English-language Wikipedia pages and examined the links in their “References” section. The vast majority of these pages (82%) contain at least one reference link – that is, one that directs the reader to a webpage other than Wikipedia itself.

In total, there are just over 1 million reference links across all the pages we collected. The typical page has four reference links.

The analysis indicates that 11% of all references linked on Wikipedia are no longer accessible. On about 2% of source pages containing reference links, every link on the page was broken or otherwise inaccessible, while another 53% of pages contained at least one broken link.

For this analysis, we collected nearly 5 million tweets posted from March 8 to April 27, 2023, on the social media platform X, which at the time was known as Twitter. We did this using Twitter’s Streaming API, collecting 3,000 public tweets every 30 minutes in real time. This provided us with a representative sample of all tweets posted on the platform during that period. We monitored those tweets until June 15, 2023, and checked each day to see if they were still available on the site or not.

At the end of the observation period, we found that 18% of the tweets from our initial collection window were no longer publicly visible on the site . In a majority of cases, this was because the account that originally posted the tweet was made private, suspended or deleted entirely. For the remaining tweets, the account that posted the tweet was still visible on the site, but the individual tweet had been deleted.

Which tweets tend to disappear?

Tweets were especially likely to be deleted or removed over the course of our collection period if they were:

• Written in certain languages. Nearly half of all the Turkish-language tweets we collected – and a slightly smaller share of those written in Arabic – were no longer available at the end of the tracking period.
• Posted by accounts using the site’s default profile settings. More than half of tweets from accounts using the default profile image were no longer available at the end of the tracking period, as were more than a third from accounts with a default bio field. Tweets from these accounts tend to disappear because the entire account has been deleted or made private, as opposed to the individual tweet being deleted.
• Posted by unverified accounts.

We also found that removed or deleted tweets tended to come from newer accounts with relatively few followers and modest activityon the site. On average, tweets that were no longer visible on the site were posted by accounts around eight months younger than those whose tweets stayed on the site.

And when we analyzed the types of tweets that were no longer available, we found that retweets, quote tweets and original tweets did not differ much from the overall average. But replies were relatively unlikely to be removed – just 12% of replies were inaccessible at the end of our monitoring period.

Most tweets that are removed from the site tend to disappear soon after being posted. In addition to looking at how many tweets from our collection were still available at the end of our tracking period, we conducted a survival analysis to see how long these tweets tended to remain available. We found that:

• 1% of tweets are removed within one hour
• 3% within a day
• 10% within a week
• 15% within a month

Put another way: Half of tweets that are eventually removed from the platform are unavailable within the first six days of being posted. And 90% of these tweets are unavailable within 46 days.

Tweets don’t always disappear forever, though. Some 6% of the tweets we collected disappeared and then became available again at a later point. This could be due to an account going private and then returning to public status, or to the account being suspended and later reinstated. Of those “reappeared” tweets, the vast majority (90%) were still accessible on Twitter at the end of the monitoring period.

• For our analysis of news sites, we did not collect or check the functionality of internal-facing on-page links – those that point to another page on the same root domain. ↩

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New trade proposal would send Chicago Bulls' Nikola Vucevic to Memphis Grizzlies for wing depth

A Bleacher Report new trade proposal would send veteran Chicago Bulls big man Nikola Vucevic to Memphis Grizzlies for wing depth. The deal , cooked up by B/R league analyst Andy Bailey, would send Vooch to Memphis for sharpshooting 2 guard Luke Kennard and backup forward Ziaire Williams.

Pointing to the fact that while it might have been helpful for the Griz' Jaren Jackson Jr. to have tried playing the 4 with center Stephen Adams out, it became clear he is more of a power forward in Bailey's estimation. "He's also more effective defensively when a burlier big takes the post presence while he's allowed to roam," writes the author.

Vooch "doesn't check the defensive boxes the way Adams does, but he is more functionally a 5 than JJJ," he adds.

https://twitter.com/Bulls_Wire/status/1794805817025167546

"Having a starting five with two shooting bigs—Vooch made a respectable 35.9% of his triples over the three seasons prior to this one—could give Morant wider driving lanes than he's ever seen," writes Bailey.

"This price may seem steep, but losing Kennard stings less when you consider the ascension of Vince Williams Jr. and GG Jackson. And Ziaire Williams is effectively the functional equivalent of including a second-round pick in the deal."

More Analysis

Who are the best chicago bulls free agency targets, why the chicago bulls will not be able to trade nikola vucevic, does alex caruso making all-defense second team change anything for the chicago bulls, should the chicago bulls take cody williams in the 2024 nba draft if he is available at no. 11, chicago bulls hire dan craig as a lead assistant under billy donovan.

This article originally appeared on Bulls Wire: New trade proposal would send Chicago Bulls' Nikola Vucevic to Memphis Grizzlies for wing depth

Research/Study Research/Study

Key Project 2025 figure Russ Vought was appointed to the RNC's platform committee. Mainstream coverage of the move was minimal.

Vought, a former Trump official who runs MAGA think tank the Center for Renewing America, has pushed Christian nationalism and wants to recruit an “army” of right-wing activists with a “biblical worldview” to serve in the next Republican administration

Written by John Knefel

Research contributions from Tyler Monroe

Published 05/21/24 11:22 AM EDT

Russ Vought, a frequent guest on right-wing media shows and key figure in Project 2025, a broad effort to staff a future Republican administration, will have a top role in drafting the platform for the GOP's convention this July, virtually ensuring the document will be a wishlist of MAGA priorities.

The Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign made the joint announcement on May 15, highlighting Vought’s new role “as the committee's policy director” for the RNC’s 2024 Committee on the Platform and noting his previous tenure as director of the Office of Management and Budget under former President Donald Trump. In that position, Vought oversaw the administration’s attempts to remove supposed “critical race theory trainings” from federal programs and sought to coordinate the White House’s directives across the executive branch more broadly. 

As of May 21, the announcement has been met with total silence by mainstream cable outlets and corporate broadcast Sunday shows. Vought’s appointment hasn’t been mentioned at all on CNN or MSNBC, and wasn’t discussed on the May 19 editions of ABC’s This Week ; CBS’ Face the Nation ; or NBC’s Meet the Press . As a result, Vought’s radical vision for another Trump term remains hidden in plain sight, even as he positions himself for a possible return to government should his former boss win in November.

Vought is a hardline conservative who has promoted Christian nationalism and advocated for “ideological purity tests” for civil servants

After Trump’s loss in 2020, Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, where he has consistently pushed a Christian nationalist agenda. He has called for an “army” of right-wing activists with “biblical worldview” to serve in the next Republican administration, and wrote an op-ed for Newsweek in 2021 with the headline: “Is There Anything Actually Wrong With 'Christian Nationalism?' As Politico reported , “One ​​document drafted by CRA staff and fellows includes a list of top priorities for CRA in a second Trump term. ‘Christian nationalism’ is one of the bullet points.” 

The Center for Renewing America has emerged as a key player in the MAGA-aligned think tank world. It’s one of the more than 100 conservative groups that make up Project 2025 , an effort organized by The Heritage Foundation to provide staffing and policy proposals to a future GOP presidency. Vought plays a central role in the effort, including as the author of a chapter in Project 2025’s guiding document, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise , in which he argued that the “ enormous power ” of the executive branch should be exclusively the purview of the president rather than dispersed within agencies and departments.

Though that argument may sound anodyne, Vought’s vision has radical implications. First and foremost, Vought advocates for implementing a policy known as “Schedule F,” which would reclassify tens of thousands of federal employees as political appointees — thus stripping them of union protections. If Trump is reelected in November and chooses to go forward with Schedule F, he could fire career civil servants from agencies and departments en masse and replace them hardcore MAGA foot soldiers, potentially decimating the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Labor, the Department of Education, and other frequent right-wing targets.

“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” Vought has said, according to The New York Times.

In a 2022 interview with right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, Vought and the host agreed that a future Republican president should deploy “ideological purity tests” against civil servants, with Vought calling for a purge of at least 10% of the federal workforce. In a 2023 appearance on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, guest hosted by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Vought endorsed readopting the Holman Rule, which would allow members of Congress to target existing funding for agencies or individual federal employees. 

“The Holman Rule makes sure that those career bureaucrats are no longer anonymous, and that they are put in the crosshairs to the same extent — in the arena — that you are. That I am,” Vought told Gaetz, who is currently under investigation by the House Ethics Committee.

Vought has sowed chaos in the GOP-led House of Representative and targeted anti-poverty programs

In service of his uncompromising, hardline stances, Vought has championed the right-most flank of the Republican House Caucus in its fights against former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and his successor, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). 

In a November 2022 appearance on Bannon’s War Room , Vought lobbied against McCarthy even before he got the job, arguing that “we need a war-time speaker that can seize confrontation and risk by the throat in order to go against their adversaries and be able to deal with the woke and weaponized government that we are all suffering from.” He later accused McCarthy of “running this House in concert with the Democrats,” during another edition of Bannon’s show. As Johnson attempted to pass a bill that would provide military aid to Ukraine, Vought returned to Bannon’s podcast and referred to Johnson as a “neocon,” who “rejects the America first perspective.”

Vought and CRA have an entire wishlist of radical domestic policies. According to The Washington Post, Vought advocates for trillions of dollars of reductions to “anti-poverty programs such as housing, health care and food assistance,” including massive cuts to Medicaid and potentially slashing Social Security and Medicare benefits in the future. Jeffrey Clark, a senior fellow at CRA and a participant in Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, has reportedly advocated for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the military against civilian protests if he wins in November.

Mainstream outlets do the public a disservice by failing to report Vought’s newly announced role is drafting the GOP’s 2024 platform for a potential second Trump administration.

Methodology

Media Matters searched transcripts in the Snapstream video database for all original programming on CNN and MSNBC as well as all original episodes of ABC’s This Week ; CBS’ Face the Nation ; and NBC’s Meet the Press for any of the terms “Vought” (including misspellings), “Center for Renewing America,” “OMB,” or “Office of Management and Budget” within close proximity of any of the terms “RNC,” “Platform,” “Republican National Committee,” or “Trump,” from May 15, 2024, when the Republican National Committee announced the appointment of Russ Vought to the Committee on the Platform, through May 20, 2024. 

We timed segments, which we defined as instances when Russ Vought's appointment to the RNC's Committee on the Platform was the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of the appointment. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed the appointment with one another.

We also timed mentions, which we defined as, instances when a single speaker in a segment on another topic mentioned Russ Vought's appointment without another speaker in the segment engaging with the comment, and teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about the appointment scheduled to air later in the broadcast.

We rounded all times to the nearest minute.

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• Published: 21 November 2023

Connecting with fans in the digital age: an exploratory and comparative analysis of social media management in top football clubs

• Edgar Romero-Jara 1 ,
• Francesc Solanellas 2 ,
• Joshua Muñoz   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6220-6328 2 &
• Samuel López-Carril   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5278-057X 3  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  10 , Article number:  858 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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• Business and management
• Cultural and media studies

In a globalised society, characterised by increasingly demanding markets and the accelerated growth of the digital approach, sports organisations face the challenge of connecting with fans, generating and maintaining audiences and communicating with stakeholders creatively and efficiently. Social media has become a fundamental tool, with engagement as a critical measurement element. However, despite its popularity and use, many questions about its application, measurement and real potential in the sports sector still need to be answered. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to carry out a descriptive and comparative analysis of the engagement generated through social media posts by elite football clubs in Europe, South America and North America. To this purpose, 19,745 Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts were analysed, through the design, validation and application of an observation instrument, using content analysis techniques. The findings show evidence of a priority focus on “Marketing” and “Sports” type messages in terms of frequency, with high engagement rates. They were also showing a growing stream of “ESG” type messages, with a low posting frequency but engagement rates similar to “Marketing” and “Sport”. “Institutional” messages remain constant in all football clubs. “Commercial” messages still have growth potential in both regards, frequency and engaging fans, representing an opportunity for digital assets. Also, specific format combinations that generate greater engagement were identified: “text/image” and “text/videos” are the format combinations more used by football clubs on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram; however, resulting in different engagement rates. This study showed evidence of different social media management strategies adopted according to region, obtaining similar engagement rates. This research concludes with theoretical and practical applications that will be of interest to both academics and practitioners to maximise the potential of social media for fan engagement, social initiatives and as a marketing tool.

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Introduction.

In a context of booming technology and high organisational competitiveness (Ratten, 2020 ), digital tools have evolved from an essential add-on to crucial strategic and operational elements in sports organisations (Stegmann et al., 2021 ). Fans increasingly demand a connection with their favourite athletes and teams (Su et al., 2020 ) through digital channels such as social media, podcasts (Rohden et al., 2023 ), Esports (Cuesta-Valiño et al., 2022 ), among others. Today’s digitised world presents therefore, an opportunity for brands, sponsors, sports properties, and other stakeholders to interact in a complex and emotionally charged sector (Su et al., 2022 ) for fans from different age generations (Sheldon et al., 2021 ). Understanding and getting to know fans are at the forefront of every sports organisation’s objective.

Social media plays a fundamental role due to their ability to reach multiple audiences faster and generate a sense of connection with fans through a key measurement element: engagement (Doyle et al., 2022 ). Sports organisations, specifically football clubs, invest time, people and resources in managing social media to achieve their brand positioning and commercial and communication objectives (Anagnostopoulos et al., 2018 ; Maderer et al., 2018 ), with Facebook, Twitter and more recently, Instagram, being the most widely used (Abeza et al., 2019 ; Machado et al., 2020 ). However, the real potential of social media and its optimal use still poses many questions to be answered.

Although there are previous studies that have explored some aspects of social media in a sports context (e.g., Anagnostopoulos et al., 2018 ; Mastromartino and Naraine, 2022 ; Su et al., 2020 ), the potential impact and efficiency of content posted by football clubs on their social media channels remains unclear. For example, several studies point to various factors that contribute to fan engagement on social media depending on elements such as the type of content, the format used (e.g. photo, text or a combination of both) or the social media platform (see Einsle et al., 2023 ; Maderer et al., 2018 ; Su et al., 2020 ). This gap in the literature prompts a call to action from across the domains of sports marketing and sports management. Identifying the elements generated by football clubs on their official social media profiles can help them improve their marketing strategies and better support their fans. Based on this need and opportunity for management improvement, this study addresses the following research question:

RQ . What are the main characteristics of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram posts from elite football clubs to understand the content type, format and social media platform that generate the highest engagement among social media consumers?

Grounded on the theoretical framework of relationship marketing, the main objective of this study is to carry out a descriptive and comparative analysis of the engagement generated through social media posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram by elite football clubs in Europe, South America and North America, using a categorisation approach developed from an existing model in the literature (see Solanellas et al., 2022 ), as well as the identification of key elements of high-impact social media posts. For this purpose, a new instrument was designed, validated and applied to analyse the use of social media as a marketing tool in sports management. By conducting this exploration, this paper contributes to the literature on sports marketing by identifying which social media and which types of content provoke the most interaction among fans. As a result, football team managers can gain a better understanding of how to target and personalise potential commercial and branding actions, thereby reinforcing the loyalty and commitment of fans to football clubs, and opening or consolidating new lines of action aligned with the strategic objectives of sport entities. Furthermore, the findings and conclusions presented in this study can assist sports managers in the decision-making process, as well as in planning, organising, directing, and effectively controlling social media platforms, thus enhancing engagement with fans in a digital environment.

The article is structured as follows. Firstly, the literature review presents the main theoretical and conceptual elements, focusing on social media and their relationship with marketing theory in sports and football. Secondly, the methodological aspects guiding the study’s process are detailed, including sample, instrument, research procedure, and data analysis. Thirdly, the study’s main results are presented. Fourth, the discussion section critically examines the findings in the context of existing literature, offering practical and theoretical implications for both academics and practitioners. Finally, the study concludes with the main conclusions and limitations.

Literature review

Social media and sports, a combination of great potential.

Social media is a collective term for media tools, platforms, and applications allowing consumers to connect, communicate, and collaborate (Williams and Chinn, 2010 ). They encourage interaction between users and the organisation and provide information from customers and the organisation faster than through conventional media (Kümpel et al., 2015 ; Shilbury et al., 2014 ). Furthermore, social media is considered a mass phenomenon due to its ability to transmit information in an agile and interactive way (Vivar, 2009 ), as well as a unique form of communication that transcends geographical and social boundaries through the instantaneous communication of information (Filo et al., 2015 ). Social Media is used in different sectors for marketing activities (Chen, 2023 ), brand equity and loyalty (Malarvizhi et al., 2022 ) to understand consumer´s behaviour, brand positioning, business revenue opportunities and social communication (Ramos et al., 2019 ). However, although the first studies about this phenomenon have been explored in the sports industry field, there is still a need for more evidence about its real potential, essential elements, and efficiency measurement in the sector.

Due to the high graphic, interactive and visual content of social media, their use in the sports industry, a sector of strong emotional influence, has become more relevant and pervasive in the last decade (Hull and Abeza, 2021 ), where the interest of the viewer has become crucial and increasingly demanding (Nisar et al. 2018 ). The differences that make the sports industry unique and particular are, among others: immediate results and changes (Davis and Hilbert, 2013 ) in addition to the fact that every decision is “in the spotlight” of the public (alluding to the complexity of fans, athletes, coaches, media and other stakeholders). Thus, athletes, teams and sports organisations have been using social media as part of their public relations and communication efforts (Filo et al., 2015 ; Pegoraro, 2010 ; Yan et al., 2019 ) to engage with their partners and fans (Zakerian et al., 2022 ), promoting interactions and increasing engagement with the sport product, as well as with the team in general (Abeza et al., 2019 ; Parganas and Anagnostopoulos, 2015 ).

The linking of social media within the integrated marketing communication process has changed communication strategies and consumer outreach, where marketing managers must include these tools when developing and executing their customer-focused promotional strategies (Lee and Kahle, 2016 ; Rehman et al., 2022 ). On the other hand, social media, directly and indirectly, impacts revenue generation and favours negotiation with sponsors due to their notoriety, visibility, and reach (Mastromartino and Naraine, 2022 ; Parganas and Anagnostopoulos, 2015 ). They are therefore considered a key tool for building and enhancing a brand’s reputation (Maderer et al., 2018 ) and an ideal platform to advertise and increase the visibility of a brand or company, as well as to interact with and analyse the actions of their fans and followers (Abeza et al., 2017 ; García-Fernández et al., 2015 ; Herrera-Torres et al., 2017 ).

Social media has also been used in sports education in recent years (Sanz-Labrador et al., 2021 ). Moreover, their application is increasingly common in construction and dissemination related to social responsibility (López-Carril and Anagnostopoulos, 2020 ; Sharpe et al., 2020 ). In this way, they have also become a key tool for interacting with fans, addressing a strengthened social approach, and gaining engagement from athletes, sponsors, and authorities (Einsle et al., 2023 ; Oviedo et al., 2014 ; Su et al., 2020 ). Beyond the digital environment, Cuesta-Valiño et al. ( 2021 ) pointed out the relevance of considering the emerging sustainable management approach to measure sports organisations’ goals. One of the most relevant challenges for this industry is to issue social media posts efficiently, using the proper formatting resources and at the right time, to generate the most significant possible impact and engagement.

Relationship marketing theory applied to social media in sports

The sports industry is a fast-growing and increasingly diverse market worldwide (Kim and Andrew, 2016 ). Football (soccer in North America) is one of the most popular sports worldwide as well as a cultural manifestation, characterised by its high emotional level and economic, political and social relevance (Bucher and Eckl, 2022 ; Petersen-Wagner and Ludvigsen, 2022 ). Only in Spain, the sports sector generates 3.3% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), of which 1.37% is produced through football (PWC, 2020 ).

Globalisation has demanded an adaptation at all levels due to the endless search for immediacy and access to information, where the business of sports is becoming more and more relationship-based and the importance of generating engagement (Einsle et al., 2023 ; Fried and Mumcu, 2017 ; García-Fernández et al., 2017 ) is one of the most relevant variables in generating loyalty in sports organisations (Loranca-Valle et al., 2021 ; Núñez-Barriopedro et al., 2021 ). Sports consumers are seen as “channels” through which sports products can be promoted (O’Shea and Alonso, 2011 ), and sports fans have become both the consumer and the advocates of the product. This is where relationship marketing theory helps us to better understand this phenomenon. As Abeza and Sanderson ( 2022 , p. 287) point out, relationship marketing theory “is based on the idea that a relationship between two parties creates additional value for those involved”. This theory is one of the most widely used to understand the phenomenon of social media in sports (Abeza and Sanderson, 2022 ) as highlighted by numerous authors who have used it in their studies (e.g., Abeza et al., 2017 , 2019 , 2020 ; Su et al., 2020 ; Williams and Chinn, 2010 ).

Merging the roots of relationship marketing theory (Möller and Halinen, 2000 ) and the particular characteristics of the sports sector, and taking into account the perspective of short-term transactions and immediate economic benefits (Abeza et al., 2017 ), social media represents opportunities for better knowledge about fans, more advanced consumer–organisation interaction, efficient fan engagement, efficient use of resources and agile evaluation of the relationship between fans and organisation (Abeza et al., 2019 , 2020 ). In view of this, and in line with Abeza and Sanderson ( 2022 ), social media thus becomes a channel through which to establish, maintain and cultivate long-term relationships beneficial to both parties (in our study, football clubs and fans).

Previous studies have addressed the use of specific social media in the context of sports, such as Facebook (Achen, 2019 ; Meng et al., 2015 ; Pegoraro et al., 2017 ; Waters et al., 2009 ), Twitter (Blaszka et al., 2012 ; Hambrick et al., 2010 ; Lovejoy and Saxton, 2012 ; Winand et al., 2019 ; Witkemper et al., 2012 ) and Instagram (Anagnostopoulos et al., 2018 ; Machado et al., 2020 ; Zakerian et al., 2022 ), because of the relevance in the use of these platforms in the sports sector. From another broader perspective, Solanellas et al. ( 2022 ) propose a practical analysis of multiple social media in sports organisations from a content categorisation point of view.

The results and contributions of the studies mentioned above, reveal the importance of further exploring the social media fan engagement phenomenon as a strategic perspective (Tafesse and Wien, 2018 ) and the added value that social media can generate in sports. In this sense, it is relevant for sports managers to know which techniques, methodologies and perspectives to use. Furthermore, as stated by Abeza and Sanderson ( 2022 ), it is necessary to go deeper into the theories behind its use. Taking these aspects into account, this work presents a new instrument of observation and measurement of social media posts by football organisations, as a basis for understanding and deepening the knowledge about the digital audience and its impact on the different objectives of the organisation. Thus, the study draws on relationship marketing theory to better understand how sports managers can make the most of the possibilities offered by social media to generate added value from the interaction between fans and football clubs. Particularly, the developed instrument focuses on the analysis of the type of content published by football clubs, categorising it into dimensions, as well as the engagement of the different publications according to the type of dimension to which they belong.

With a view to the implementation of the instrument, and to contribute to the literature related to the use of social media as a marketing tool in sports, this study analyses Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts issued by elite football clubs from Europe, South America and North America, using a practical approach to content categorisation and taking the engagement factor as a key element for comparison.

Methodology

This study adopts an exploratory, descriptive, and comparative research design (Andrew et al., 2011 ) using the observational method and content analysis techniques. Content analysis involves the recounting and comparison of content, followed by the interpretation of the underlying context. It has been widely used in social media communication research, specifically in sports settings (e.g., Anagnostopoulos et al., 2018 ; Wang and Zhou, 2015 ; Winand et al., 2019 ), to interpret textual data through systematic classification, coding, and identifying themes or patterns (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005 ). First, exploratory studies are particularly useful when the phenomenon under investigation is in constant evolution (such as social media as a marketing tool), as well as when there are several factors and variables at play (Andrew et al., 2011 ). In this study, these are linked to the engagement that can be caused by the type of content or format used by elite football clubs on their social media accounts. Second, the descriptive aspect of the research design aims to describe and quantify the engagement levels in social media for the selected football clubs. By Collecting and analysing quantitative data on the interaction metrics, including likes, comments, shares, and follower counts, the study provided a comprehensive overview of the current state of engagement, and other variables, among the clubs, helping to build a foundation for further analysis and comparison. Lastly, the comparative aspect of the research design (Andrew et al., 2011 ) is valuable in this study because it enables a cross-regional analysis of three of the most traditional social media platforms. The study compared the engagement practices, elements, and strategies across three key regions of the football industry worldwide. Understanding potential differences can be useful for sports managers to design more optimised social media marketing strategies.

Considering the study design and observational method applied in this research (Anguera-Argilaga et al., 2011 ), a nonprobable sample design (see Battaglia, 2008 ) was established following several steps to make the following three decisions: (1) selection of football clubs, (2) social media platforms, and (3) period of time studied.

First, a geographical criterion was used to determine the origin of the football clubs under study. This criterion was based on a comprehensive and global perspective, considering factors such as historical significance, popularity, sporting achievements, and the modernisation of football worldwide. Based on these considerations, three regions were selected for analysis: Europe and South America, renowned for their broad global relevance and football tradition (e.g., the winning national teams of the 22 editions of the FIFA World Cup so far are from Europe and South America [Venkat, 2023 ]). Next, North America was chosen for its ascending market growth potential and global efforts to promote football. This is exemplified by upcoming milestones, such as the organisation of the FIFA World Cup 2026 in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, as well as the recent arrival of Lionel Messi into Major League Soccer (see Mizrahi, 2023 ). These three regions are governed by the three most influential regional football bodies of FIFA: Europe (UEFA), South America (CONMEBOL), and North America (CONCACAF). Second, to select the most relevant football clubs in these three regions, we followed some of the selection criteria set in similar studies (e.g., Anagnostopoulos et al., 2018 ; Maderer et al., 2018 ). Therefore, the rankings of four of the most influential football organisations or websites were considered: (1) the International Federation of Football History and Statistics (IFFHS) club ranking, (2) the Football World Rankings website, (3) the FIFA club and league ranking, and (4) the Transfermarkt player ranking website (of great relevance in the player transfer market). As a result of this process, 24 teams were pre-selected (9 from Europe, 9 from South America and 6 from North America) according to the objectives and the study design and the author’s agreement (Andrew et al., 2011 ; Anguera-Argilaga et al., 2011 ; Battaglia, 2008 ; Hernández-Sampieri et al., 2014 ). Finally, a random draw was made resulting in a selection of six teams from Europe, six from South America and four from North America (with a limit of two teams per league). This process resulted in the 16 teams whose use of social media is analysed in this study (see Table 1 ).

Following, social media to be analysed in the study were selected. It was noted in the literature that Facebook had been one of the first social media to be used by football clubs and other sports organisations, either to connect with fans or purely for informational purposes (Achen, 2019 ; Waters et al., 2009 ). Twitter and Instagram are also platforms that have become relevant, not only for marketers in sports but also in other sectors (Anagnostopoulos et al., 2018 ; Wang and Zhou, 2015 ). Although the use of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as marketing tools for football clubs has been studied (e.g., Machado et al. 2020 ; Maderer et al. 2018 ; Nisar et al., 2018 ), there is a lack of literature comparing their potential engagement across a sample of teams from different geographic regions. Thus, it was deemed appropriate to select these three social media sources for our study.

Finally, the periods over which the publications were to be extracted were determined. Among other authors, Ashley and Tuten ( 2015 ) point out that, in a social media environment, two to four weeks are sufficient for a wide variety of posts to be made in a regular and cyclical context, excluding exceptional milestones or events that could have an extraordinary impact on engagement and that could bias regular reading. Therefore, 45 days for each club and each social media is set as an appropriate observation period.

Once the sample selection criteria had been defined, the links of all publications from the clubs selected in the study on the three social media were extracted through the Fanpage Karma software that allows data to be collected and interpreted (Lozano-Blasco et al., 2021 ). After prior data analysis, the final sample consisted of 19,745 publications, a very similar figure to that used in other related studies (e.g., Maderer et al., 2018 ; Yan et al., 2019 ).

Instrument and research procedure

Based on the review of the techniques and methodologies used to analyse the use of social media as a marketing tool for football clubs in previous studies, we proceeded to design and develop an observation and data collection instrument in a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet (.xlsx format), taking as a starting point the model of content analysis proposed by Solanellas et al. ( 2022 ). Due to the nature of the study, the .xlsx data collection format was chosen for its flexibility, allowing for manual data collection and the application of the categorisation tool post-by-post. This format has been successfully used as a data collection tool in previous social media content analysis studies in football (e.g., López-Carril and Anagnostopoulos, 2020 ).

To ensure its rigour, the codebook was subsequently submitted for review to nine field experts. The selection of these experts was undertaken via judgmental nonprobability sampling, a method commonly employed in the literature due to the specialised and ever-evolving nature of the subject (Andrew et al., 2011 ). These individuals were chosen based on specific criteria, encompassing their professional roles in specialised, coordinating, managerial, or directorial positions tied to the digital domain. Moreover, their academic background, particularly in marketing, methodology, or digital tools, was considered. To ensure an extensive grasp of the subject matter, the chosen experts were required to have a minimum of five years of experience in the area and to be actively participating in their respective roles. This approach aimed to incorporate diverse viewpoints, offering insights from a spectrum of angles relevant to this research. As a result, the panel of experts was comprised of the following professionals: the Head of Digital from a prominent European professional football league (1), a Marketing Manager and an International Communications Manager from leading professional football clubs (2), Directors of digital marketing and branding agencies (2), professors specialising in marketing and sports management at Spanish universities (2), and the Vice-President of Sales along with the Head of Digital from sports business intelligence consultancies (2).

Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with these chosen experts to delve into pertinent aspects linked to the study. An interview guide was developed, following the methodological aspects indicated in specialised works in this field (see Andrew et al., 2011 ; Anguera-Argilaga et al., 2011 ). Furthermore, the interview guide encompassed critical aspects of social media management and relevant facets of football club management (e.g., post formats, observation timeframes, platforms for capturing and analysing social media posts), drawing upon the elements and variables derived from studies conducted by Parganas and Anagnostopoulos ( 2015 ) as well as Solanellas et al. ( 2022 ). Additionally, these interviews comprised discussions about the conception and execution of the observation tool, which was employed as a supplementary instrument for data collection. Further variables relevant to the research objectives were explored within these interviews.

The qualitative insights garnered from the experts’ conclusive remarks offered valuable suggestions that contributed to refining the study’s development and enhancing the observation tool. This iterative approach ensured the harmonisation of the tool with the research objectives and its effective alignment with the study’s research questions. After incorporating the modifications suggested in the experts’ evaluations, the study’s codebook adhered to the variables and categories illustrated in Table 2 .

The .xlsx instrument sheet was then pilot-tested. Seventy-five publications (25 from Facebook, 25 from Instagram and 25 from Twitter) from three different football clubs were randomly selected, conforming to a total sample of 225 publications. The data were collected in an observation sheet in .xlxs format for analysis purposes. During the analysis process, including the discussion of possible discrepancies in interpreting each publication as belonging to one or another of the dimensions of the study’s codebook, the authors decided that each publication would be classified only in one dimension, depending on the type of content that predominates in each post.

To measure the level of reliability and accuracy of the instrument (Andrew et al., 2011 ), the intra-observer reliability method was applied, incorporating 10–12 minute breaks every 40–45 min of observation. After 15 days, the same publications were re-coded using the same established protocol. The results of the coding provided a Kappa coefficient of 0.949, demonstrating a very high level of agreement and reliability, following the scale of Landis and Koch ( 1977 ).

To measure the reliability and accuracy of the instrument (Andrew et al. 2011 ), the intra-observer reliability method was applied. In the first stage, the data was collected and coded post-by-post by applying the xlsx. sheet, incorporating 10–12 minute breaks every 40–45 min of observation to ensure the quality of the data observed and collected. The same posts were re-coded using the same established protocol in the second stage. To ensure a more accurate application of the codebook and to avoid potential bias, a 15-day impasse was established between the two data collections. The coding results between the two stages provided a Kappa coefficient of 0.949, demonstrating a very high level of agreement and reliability, following the scale of Landis and Koch ( 1977 ).

Finally, based on the interaction data collected with the data collection instrument, the variable of engagement with the publications was calculated by adapting the formulas used by the Fanpage Karma ( 2022 ) and Rival IQ (Feehan, 2023 ) platforms (Fig. 1 ).

Adapted from Fanpage Karma ( 2022 ) and Rival IQ (Feehan, 2023 ) platforms.

Therefore, after the protocol and the .xlsx observation instrument sheet were tested and validated, the final procedure was established as follows: (a) social media posts from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram of the selected football clubs were extracted automatically using the FanPage Karma license and added to the .xlsx observation instrument sheet; (b) according to the Study Codebook (see Table 2 ) the data was collected and registered manually into the .xlsx observation instrument sheet by clicking the posts one by one; c) we proceeded to set up a database coding the variables from the data collected to perform the statistical analyses.

Data analysis

A descriptive analysis of the engagement generated by publications on social media and their content (dimensions and formats) on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter was carried out. To analyse the differences in engagement generated by the posts on each social media according to their content, we used the t-test for independent samples and the one-factor ANOVA. The significance value established is <0.05. A chi-square test and correspondence analysis were applied to identify and visualise points of association between the key variables. Data analysis was performed using the SPSS statistical package, version 27.0.

As shown in Table 3 , of the 19,745 posts observed and analysed, Twitter accounted for 64%, followed by Facebook at 22% and Instagram at 14%. However, from the point of view of engagement, Instagram reflects an average of 1.873, well above the other social media. Facebook follows it with 0.112 and Twitter with 0.045, showing an inverse behaviour to the number of posts made.

Frequency and engagement

In Fig. 2 , we can observe the strategy used by each club in terms of the frequency of posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as well as the levels of engagement obtained. On Facebook, the football clubs analysed posts at different frequencies. In Europe, we observe that the clubs with the highest frequency of posts are Liverpool FC and Manchester United FC, with n  = 445 and n  = 486, respectively. In contrast, the Spanish clubs (Real Madrid FC and FC Barcelona) have the lowest frequency of posts ( n  = 195 and n  = 118, respectively). On the other hand, beyond this difference in frequency, they have very similar engagement ratios.

Frequency of posts and level of engagement generated on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram by the football clubs selected for this study (organised by regions).

The club with the highest frequency of publications is CR Flamengo from Brazil ( n  = 644); however, SE Palmeiras, the other Brazilian club studied, despite registering fewer publications in the same period ( n  = 289), shows much higher levels of engagement. SE Palmeiras (Brazil), Club Olimpia and Club Cerro Porteño (Paraguay), CF America (Mexico) and Atlanta United FC (USA) show the highest levels of engagement, with similar posting frequencies (between n  = 142 and n  = 241). On Twitter, the highest frequencies of posts were published compared to Facebook and Instagram, with CR Flamengo and Atlanta United FC being the clubs that posted the most ( n  = 1606 and n  = 2096, respectively). However, the levels of engagement identified show similar and homogeneous levels in the period analysed, regardless of the frequency of publications. On the other hand, the highest engagement levels were observed on Instagram, with a lower frequency of publications in all cases. Football clubs SE Palmeiras, CA River Plate, CF America and Atlanta United FC have the highest engagement values (2.5 and 3), with posting frequencies ranging from n  = 91 to n  = 154. European football clubs have very similar engagement ratios (around 1.00), while North American football clubs have different engagement values despite having similar posting frequencies ( n  = 91 and n  = 154).

Content dimensions of publications

As shown in Fig. 3 , we observe the dimensions proposed in this study, comparing the social media analysed and the engagement generated by each category. From this point of view, in terms of frequency, the “Marketing” and “Sport” dimensions are observed as the most used publication approaches by football clubs, followed by the “Institutional” dimension, “Commercial” and, finally, “ESG”. This order of frequency applies to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Categorisation in the posts’ dimensions and their relationship with the engagement generated by Facebook, Twitter and Instagram of the football clubs analysed.

In terms of engagement, the social media Instagram is the one that registers considerably higher values than the rest of the social media analysed, with the “Marketing” dimension generating the highest engagement (2.03). It is followed by the “Institutional” dimension (1.78) and the “Sports” dimension (1.74), closing with the “Commercial” and “ESG” dimensions, with values of 1.54 and 1.41, respectively. Facebook is the following social media that generates the highest engagement.

In the case of Facebook (see Supplementary Table S1 ), the findings show a significance of the engagement means between the “Commercial” and the “Sports” ( p  = 0.000 < 0.05), “Institutional” ( p  = 0.001 < 0.05) and “Marketing” type of the posts in Facebook.

On the other hand, Twitter (see Supplementary Table S2 ) is the one that generates the minor engagement, with very similar values between the different dimensions, despite being the one with the highest frequency of publications (Fig. 3 ). Unlike the previous dimensions, the “Institutional”, “ESG”, and “Commercial” dimensions are those with the highest engagement values (0.07), followed by the “Marketing” and “Sports” dimensions (both with 0.04). However, in this social media platform, the “Institutional” type of content is statistically significant with “Sports” ( p  = 0.000 < 0.05), “Commercial” ( p  = 0.000 < 0.05) and “Marketing” ( p  = 0.000 < 0.05). Also, we can find significant engagement results between the “ESG” and the “Commercial” ( p  = 0.033 < 0.05) dimensions.

On Instagram (see Supplementary Table S3 ), the “Marketing” dimension has the highest engagement value, as does the “Institutional” dimension (both with 0.12). It is followed by the “Sports” dimension (0.11), “ESG” (0.10) and finally, “Commercial” (0.07) (Fig. 3 ). Nevertheless, as difference of Facebook and Twitter, the findings show a strong relevance of “Marketing” dimensions posts (Supplementary Table S3 ), linked significantly with “Sports” ( p  = 0.000 < 0.05), “Commercial” ( p  = 0.000 < 0.05) and “Institutional” ( p  = 0.002 < 0.05).

Types of formats in publications

Nine combinations of the most relevant formats have been identified in the publications analysed (Table 4 ), both in the frequency of use and engagement they generate.

On Facebook, the most frequent formats are “Text/Image” and “Text/Video” ( n  = 2031 and n  = 1265, respectively). However, the format with the highest engagement is “Image” (0.23), followed by “Text/Image” (0.13), “Text/Video” (0.12) and “Text/Link” (0.07). On Twitter, on the other hand, the “Text/Image” format is the most used ( n  = 4412), “Text” ( n  = 2499), “Text/Video” ( n  = 2239) and “Image” ( n  = 1534), with the “Text/Video” and “Text/Image” format combinations (0.07) registering the highest engagement. On Instagram, due to the nature of social media, the most frequent format is “Text/Image” ( n  = 1986). In terms of engagement, the formats “Image” (2.20), “Text/Image” (1.95), “Text/Image/Polls” (1.93) and “Video” (1.84) have the highest values.

The correspondence analysis (Fig. 4 ) shows the degree of association between the variables and the categorisation dimensions proposed in this study in a relative position map. The chi-squared test yielded a result of 1027.65. The “Marketing” dimension shows a closer relationship with the “video” and “image” format resources. The “ESG” and “Institutional” content type shows an association with the “Image” and “Text” formats. The “Commercial” dimension, based on the characteristics of the categorisation, shows a relationship with the “Link” format as ideal points of association, considering the frequency and engagement analysed.

Correspondence analysis (dimensions and formats).

Nowadays, sports organisations and athletes use social media for communication purposes, brand positioning, visibility (Maderer et al., 2018 ; Winand et al., 2019 ; Zakerian et al., 2022 ) and even for potential business (Parganas and Anagnostopoulos, 2015 ), dedicating effort and resources. Previous studies reinforce the need to categorise the message delivered to understand this phenomenon according to the objective (Filo et al., 2015 ) and content analysis for effect (Meng et al., 2015 ). However, its optimal use still leaves many questions. The complexity of the market is evolving towards the need to understand the fan as a premise in a sector characterised by its high emotional charge. In the past, strategies focused on attracting and retaining fans. However, the current trend shows increased relevance in generating engagement (Oviedo et al., 2014 ) to generate links with fans. The sports industry, especially in the digital environment, is in an era where the goal is not just getting new followers and post social media content but interact and engage “to know the users better”.

First, this study provides evidence of relevant frequency-engagement relationships according to the dimensions of the study, depending on the type of social media used (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram). Regarding the dimensions of the content published, the posts related to “Marketing” and “Sport” are the most frequent due to the natural and traditional use of these tools as communicative, brand positioning and informative elements (Lee and Kahle, 2016 ; Rehman et al., 2022 ; Winand et al., 2019 ). This is attributable to the need for clubs to generate emotional content (such as videos or images of past iconic matches or campaigns involving athletes), on the one hand, and to broadcast messages alluding to sporting performance and results. Nevertheless, the findings show different engagement impacts not directly linked to the frequency of the posts but influenced by other elements, such as the social media platform, the dimension of the content and the format. The evidence shows there are specific content dimensions that statistically generate more engagement in each platform.

On Facebook, the most traditional platform football clubs use provides a more balanced frequency-engagement ratio, with a strong engagement with “commercial” content. This platform was one of the social media platforms that started monetising in other industries, characterised for its high brand impact, where the know-how and the platform interphase are more friendly to focus on this type of posts (and in some cases, to launch joint posts with brands). Even with the positive engagement impact of this platform, it is observed that efforts of this nature in the digital sphere are scarce in comparison to the rest, making this a relevant aspect in the spectrum of growth and an opportunity to explore, especially with the new assets that are appearing in the market and the growth of e-commerce.

On Twitter, on the other hand, the dimension that works best for engaging in “Institutional” is linked to “Sports”, “Marketing” and “Commercial” content, but not with “ESG”. However, the “ESG” linked with “Commercial” dimensions statically gets significantly more impact on this platform. The “ESG” dimension is emerging as this platform is used for promoting socio-political activities and promoting more altruistic purposes as previous authors as López-Carril and Anagnostopoulos ( 2020 ), and Sharpe et al. ( 2020 ) noted. This strategy shows a possible intention to use social media not only for marketing (communication) or sporting purposes but also as an element with socio-political aspects. The nature of Twitter as a microblogging site with the highest number of posts with the lower means of engagement, is more attractive for the audience looking for quick and summarised information because of its ability to increase the visibility and awareness of fans (Abeza et al., 2017 ). Sports managers can focus on this type of message for a potential higher engagement on Twitter.

In contrast, on Instagram, the focus is on “Marketing” content. This platform shows the lowest number of post frequency, with a high engagement means, attributable to the platform’s audio–visual formats and more interactive content, ratifying its growing popularity among users. As a fast-growing platform, there is a major link with “Sports”, “Institutional” and “Commercial” dimensions, which makes it an ideal platform for emotional content, easy to connect with brands, athletes, and sports properties, counting with a larger and more varied audience looking mainly, as the evidence suggests, for entertainment and club’s closeness perception. Therefore, like Anagnostopoulos et al. ( 2018 ), we recommend sports managers use Instagram for marketing purposes, considering the context as a relevant factor.

Finally, this study reveals the post format’s relevance as another key element. In this sense, on Facebook, the highest engagement values are generated by “Image” and “Text/Image” formats, as on Instagram and Twitter; however, in each social media platform, the frequencies generated by these records are different. In any case, the power of the image as valuable content in marketing stands out, as it has also been highlighted in previous studies (e.g., Anagnostopoulos et al., 2018 ; Doyle et al., 2022 ; Machado et al., 2020 ). Nevertheless, the results obtained regarding the engagement triggered by video format posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are not as conclusive, as other studies have pointed out (e.g., Su et al., 2020 ). Probably because these social media are not focused on that format as other social media such as TikTok or YouTube may be. Regardless, based on the results obtained, it is necessary for sports managers and academics to continue to explore and make the appropriate combinations of the dimensions of content type categorised in this study, the publication format, as well as the social media used to channel them.

Theoretical implications

Built upon the framework of relationship marketing, this study brings theoretical value to the realms of sports marketing, sports management, and fan engagement, spanning across four distinct lines of action.

Firstly, the research introduces a novel theoretical approach to social media strategies by employing a 5-dimensional content categorisation system aligned with the strategic pillars of football organisations. Previous studies have predominantly approached the role of social media in sports reactively, primarily focusing on communication and branding aspects. In contrast, this study contributes to the literature by adopting a strategic perspective towards social media, establishing a linkage between the study dimensions and football club strategies. This foundation paves the way for future research to delve deeper into each proposed dimension, potentially identifying sub-groups and exploring them in greater detail. The proposed dimensions serve to systematically organise the primary facets of football organisations for digital context analysis, a realm of increasing importance within the sports industry. As such, this work marks a pioneering step towards a novel approach in this area of study.

Secondly, this study establishes a fresh frequency-engagement approach for social network management, dispelling the notion that post frequency directly correlates with generated engagement. In doing so, this work highlights additional pivotal factors beyond post frequency that influence engagement among users of football-related social media. This perspective is aligned with the ethos of Web 2.0, underscoring the significance of engaging and connecting with fans.

Thirdly, from a theoretical perspective, this study introduces an innovative analytical proposition focusing on prominent international football clubs. This innovation is realised through the calculation and translation of engagement ratios, facilitating cross-entity comparisons independent of geographical location and follower count. The instrument developed and applied in this study acts as a tool to identify valuable digital practices within the industry.

Finally, this study stands out by conducting simultaneous analyses of posts across three prominent social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram), adopting a distinctive multi-platform approach that is seldom observed in comparable studies which often focus on a single social media platform. Gaining insights into the effects of cross-platform and cross-format postings can empower sports managers to make strategic decisions with a comprehensive perspective.

Practical implications

This study introduces a novel practical tool designed for the computation of fan engagement across the Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts of football clubs globally. Consequently, sports managers can employ this instrument to gain a more realistic comprehension of the performance of social media accounts belonging to clubs. Furthermore, the developed tool facilitates the assessment of fan engagement in relation to the content type being published. This capability can aid sports managers in fortifying the bond between clubs and their followers by generating heightened value through strategic social media initiatives.

It is important to note that sports managers should consider both internal factors (club tradition, organisational culture) and external factors (competition, fan behaviour, sports results) within the context of clubs. This consideration is essential for developing and planning optimal digital strategies and for generating the best possible engagement with the audience. This research furnishes empirical evidence for understanding, in a practical and actionable manner, the pivotal components of a social media post. This understanding permits the visualisation of optimal combinations of these elements, thereby increasing the likelihood of sports managers guiding the club toward success and fostering substantial user engagement. Therefore, football team managers can apply the findings of this study to plan, monitor, and evaluate the club’s social media content for increased engagement and “closeness” with digital fans. They can combine various formats based on individual post requirements to achieve the desired results. Additionally, football team managers can analyse club identity and overall strategies more practically and coherently, facilitating the planning and execution of more effective commercial, brand positioning, institutional, and other relevant digital goals, with engagement serving as a key metric.

Conclusions

Social media plays a key role in today’s sports management, especially in football clubs, due to its global reach and ability to interact and connect with fans in an industry of great popularity, emotional charge, and economic, political and social impact. This exploratory research grounded in relationship marketing theory provided a comparison of the engagement generated by elite football clubs under a unique categorisation proposal, derived and adapted from existing literature, which addresses dimensions linked to strategic areas of football organisations and takes into consideration key elements such as frequency and format combinations used to analyse the efficiency of posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Based on the results obtained, three lines of action stand out. First, concerning the type of content of the post, the “Marketing” and “Sports” dimensions are the preferred categories for football clubs in terms of post frequency. Regarding the engagement rates, on Facebook, the “Commercial” dimension shows an opportunity for growth and development due to the good engagement impact and due to the technological boom and the emergence of new digital assets. On Twitter, the emerging “ESG” linked to “Commercial” perspective and the “Institutional” dimension gets a significant impact on Twitter. On Instagram, the “Marketing” dimension linked to “Sports”, “Institutional” and “Commercial”, makes this platform ideal for emotional and marketing purposes. Second, concerning social media sources, this study provides evidence that Instagram is the social media that generates the most engagement using the lowest frequency of posts, followed by Facebook and Twitter. There is no direct evidence that links the post’s frequency with the engagement generated. Finally, concerning the type of format of the post, the combination of formats that generates the most engagement in all cases is “Image”, “Text/Image”, and “Text/Video”.

In short, this research stimulates a practical reflection for professionals and academics on the exploration, analysis, and evaluation of the management of social media in football clubs, using the observation method and content analysis techniques, applying elements of reliability and scientific rigour. The results obtained in this study offer practical and managerial implications in sports management, fan engagement, digital marketing, and social media, among others, through a proposal for categorisation and unique variables, taking engagement and its influence within the context of analysis as the axis.

The above conclusions should be taken into consideration viewing a series of limitations of the study. Firstly, the sample is limited to one sport (football) and not a large number of football clubs from different regions of the world. Secondly, despite the high number of posts analysed, these are located over a short period of time, and it may be relevant to analyse the engagement of posts at different times of the season, as these can influence the type of content and the engagement of fans with the posts. Thirdly, the study is limited to analysing engagement on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, leaving aside the analysis of the possibilities that other booming social media, such as TikTok or Twitch, are having in the field of marketing. Nevertheless, these limitations can be a starting point for future research lines including, among others: (a) to assess the application and feasibility of the technique for measuring social media engagement included in this work in other football organisations (e.g. leagues) or social media platforms (e.g., TikTok, Twitch); (b) to incorporate new variables of study (e.g., size of the social mass of sports clubs, financial budget, trophies won); (c) to conduct the study considering different phases of the sports season (e.g.; preseason, season, playoffs; postseason); (d) to analyse fan engagement relation of geographical regions to understand the digital user’s behaviours; (e) to conduct the study adding engagement prediction models in social media; and (f) to incorporate this model on an AI language to suggest and predict digital user engagement in a simulated context.

Data availability

The datasets generated and analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the experts who contributed their excellent technical knowledge and valuable inputs to the development of this work and the Fanpage Karma platform for providing the software licence to support this research. Edgar Romero-Jara would like to acknowledge the funding support of the pre-doctoral scholarship “National Academic Excellence Scholarship Programme Carlos Antonio López (BECAL)”, granted by the Government of Paraguay. Samuel López-Carril would like to acknowledge the funding support of the postdoctoral contract “Juan de la Cierva-formación 2021” (FJC2021-0477779-I), granted by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and by the European Union through the NextGenerationEU Funds (Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resilencia).

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ER-J (corresponding author) and FS: conception and design of the work. ER-J and JM: analysis and methodology. ER-J and SL-C: literature review, interpretation of data, drafting of the work. FS: supervised this work. All authors made substantial contributions, discussed the results, revised critically for important intellectual content, and approved the final version of the work.

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Romero-Jara, E., Solanellas, F., Muñoz, J. et al. Connecting with fans in the digital age: an exploratory and comparative analysis of social media management in top football clubs. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 10 , 858 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02357-8

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The now-controversial flag flown at Justice Alito’s beach house? It’s rooted in Massachusetts.

Long before it became embroiled in the latest controversy involving a US Supreme Court justice, the “Appeal to Heaven” flag was known for its deep New England roots; versions of the flag are still associated with the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown and the state of Maine. To this day, it remains the official naval and maritime flag of Massachusetts.

Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that Justice Samuel Alito flew the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, officially known as the Pine Tree Flag, at his beach house in New Jersey last year. Previously the Times had reported that Alito’s home in suburban Virginia had flown an upside-down American flag, an official sign of distress and a banner carried by Jan. 6 rioters at the Capitol. (Alito said his wife hung the flag to troll neighbors as a part of a charged political dispute.)

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The Pine Tree flag also was among the flags carried during the Jan. 6 attack.

The Pine Tree flag has come to represent a call for Christian revolution, said Brad Onishi, the author of “Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism – And What Comes Next.”

“Supporters really see the flag as symbolic that we have run out of human options and ways to appeal with our normal ways of challenging, like a voting booth or the courts,” Onishi said. The flag “signals an appeal to God to restore the United States to what they think it should be and includes a call for Christians to participate in a spiritual battle.”

Historically, however, some version of a pine tree on a white background was used on New England merchant ships during the American Colonial era. The symbol then made sense. The Eastern White Pine, found all over New England, was sought after by the British for ship building. This was particularly true in New Hampshire, where sales of white pine to the British navy buoyed the economy.

It was such a valuable commodity that New Hampshire’s Colonial state government passed a law making it illegal for Colonists to take down an Eastern White Pine for their own purposes, such as building a house, even if the tree was on their own land. When the British governor of New Hampshire began enforcing this law, it led to the Pine Tree Riot, a precursor to the Boston Tea Party, which occurred a year later.

So when George Washington asked his personal secretary to draw up a flag for six naval ships during the American Revolution, the Pine Tree Flag emerged. It included not only a pine tree, but also the phrase “Appeal to Heaven,” taken from British philosopher John Locke, who wrote that since there were no international laws at the time, “The people have no other remedy in this, as in all other cases where they have no judge on earth, but to appeal to heaven.”

By 1776, it became the official flag for the Massachusetts navy.

Peter Drummey, chief historian and librarian at the Massachusetts Historical Society, said that back then, the words “appeal to heaven” on the flag were viewed as “you look to God as your authority for rebellion.” He acknowledged that today it’s being repurposed in “a pretty charged way.”

In 1971, the “appeal to heaven” part was dropped by the Massachusetts Legislature.

The Massachusetts secretary of state’s office confirmed the amended version without the phrase is still the ensign of Massachusetts maritime ships. That said, it’s unclear exactly where the flag is flown. For example, it isn’t flown on campus or on any vessels at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Buzzards Bay, according to a spokesperson.

A pine tree made its way to other flags, including one flown during the pivotal Battle of Bunker Hill in Charlestown in 1775. It was also on Maine’s first ever flag adorned with a blue star. In November, voters in Maine, the Pine Tree State, will vote in a referendum whether to replace it with the first simple pine tree version. The flag, first flown in 1901, had a resurgence of popularity during the state’s bicentennial celebrations in 2019.

The appearance of the flag at the Jan. 6 attack, in particular, created its recent popularity among a certain group, but it began to be used in a new political context in 2013 when William “Dutch” Sheets, a conservative South Carolina minister, began posting about it on social media.

Leslie Hahner, a Baylor University professor who researches symbols as communication tools, has tracked the use of the Pine Tree Flag and notes that symbols and flags are being repurposed more often in the digital age. Hahner noted the Proud Boys, a white nationalist group, began using the flag as a symbol the nation was in distress.

“The advent of the internet and social media has accelerated the process of re-signification,” said Hahner. “We see this over the Pine Tree Flag where it starts online and then on Jan. 6 it becomes associated with being pro-Trump now along with Christian nationalism.”

Jackie Kucinich of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

James Pindell can be reached at [email protected] . Follow him @jamespindell and on Instagram @jameswpindell .

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