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The World's First Social Media War: Israel v. Hamas
Media watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting notes:
The conventional corporate media timelines usually stress, whatever the facts, that Israel is responding to violent attacks by Palestinians.
For example, the New York Times and other mainstream media claim Israel only responds after “persistent Palestinian rocket fire", which is false. FAIR documented this occurring numerous times over the past decade.
(Of course, the media is always pro-war, always serves the powerful and real reporting is strongly discouraged.)
But it's not just corporate media ... Israel and Hamas are fighting in social media as well.
Specifically, 26 year old snowboarder Sacha Dratwa has overseen a savvy social media campaign which currently has the upper hand:
AP notes:
The Israeli government is trying to pre-empt a publicity pounding over its Gaza offensive by aggressively pushing out its version of events, furiously tweeting and Facebook posting updates from a "media bunker."
***
Media experts say that Israel's public relations campaign is just an extension of the traditional effort by government propaganda machines to dictate and control the media narrative during a conflict.
"The underlying reasons of Israel's propaganda are to silence the enemy, gain international support and justify wars," says Helga Tawil-Souri, associate professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University.
"Their goal has not fundamentally changed over the years, only the platforms on which these are disseminated," she said.
USA Today reports:
As the conflict in Gaza intensifies and claims more lives, a new front has opened up: Both sides are now battling it out in social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook in an intense public relations offensive.
In addition to Facebook and Twitter accounts, the IDF is also on Tumblr and Pinterest, posting photos of the military operation and of day-to-day army life. The Israeli military also is streaming images from drone cameras to Twitter posts.
***
The Israeli strategy marks a departure from previous conflicts with Palestinian territories and is in large part down to negative response to how they have handled the media in the past, experts say.
***
"Since then, the IDF has invested heavily in its social media operation," said Rebecca Stein, professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University who has studied the IDF's use of social media.
"It has realized it has to talk in the vernacular of social media – its output is more polished," she says.
Philip Howard, a fellow at Princeton University who specializes in social media and political Islam, said it is likely it is likely that Israel's tweets before the initial airstrikes were first time an army has provided advance warning of an attack using social media.
"There are examples of military officers blogging or posting things that enemy governments dislike," he said. "But this was no slip-up; there was a deliberate strategy to 'get ahead' of social media by tweeting in advance."
Forbes writes:
Both Israel and Hamas have essentially live tweeted the confrontation from its beginning, mixing military updates with threats, YouTube videos, graphic images and made-for-Twitter graphics. The IDF has also been pushing its message on Tumblr and Instagram.
The all-out battle on social media has bewildered many following the confrontation online. Mathew Ingram, a senior writer at GigaOM, tried to sum up his thoughts in a tweet: “Fascinating, horrifying, bizarre, disturbing,” he wrote. “I think I have officially run out of adjectives to describe what Israel and Hamas are doing.”
***Jeff Jarvis, director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York Journalism school, said in a phone interview that while he had not quite figured out what gives this confrontation such an odd feel, the aggressive, official use of social media made may be responsible.
Jarvis pointed out that social media has been used in conflicts before– notably in the Arab Spring—but that governments perhaps have not been as involved.“Twitter has been used by witnesses and participants in these events and media was the outlet for institutions,” he said. “So what we see now, is the institutions heading over into the medium of the witnesses and participants.”
It may, of course, just come down to creative and tone. The graphics posted by both sides, for instance, have been especially strange. One posted by Israel’s @IDFSpokesperson account portrayed rockets raining down on the Statue of Liberty, Big Ben, and the Eiffel tower and asked “WHAT WOULD YOU DO?”
***Another, posted by Hamas, showed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hoisted in the air by a Qassam rocket ***
When a military at war asks its Twitter followers to “Please Retweet,” or check out its Tumblr, or posts an image of a rocket hooking a Prime Minister’s undergarments, it is hard not to sense a disconnect between that messaging and the bombing taking place in real life. As The Verge’s Joseph L. Flatley put it, “One liveblogs award shows or CES keynotes, not armed conflict.”
Still, Jarvis thinks the strategy is an effective one because it allows the two entities to go straight to the people, as opposed to speaking through the media . “You want to get your message out without being reduced to somebody else’s selection of sound bites,” he said. “This allows them to go around the mediators.”
Of course, Israeli service men are not the only ones engaged in pro-Israeli social media efforts. As we've noted for years, Israel has employed its civilians to automatically vote stories questioning Israel down and to send pro-Israel letters to politicians and media (see this, this and this).
Indeed, Israeli prime minister Netanyahu publicly thanked Israel's keyboard warriors for battling on social media for the cause:
AP points out:
In an operation attached to Israel's press office, hundreds of volunteers produce and post instant videos and graphics about the latest twists in the Gaza offensive from Israel's point of view. Its Facebook site, "Israel Under Fire," has gained more than 24,000 "likes" over the last week.
***
"We're removing the media middle men," said Daniel Seaman, deputy director general of Israel's Ministry of Public Diplomacy, as youth buzzed around with computers and smartphones. "They used to say the Elders of Zion controlled the media. Well, here are the youngsters of Zion who are running it."
On the other hand, Ynet says that Hamas has won the media war.
And RT says that Hamas has won the social media war on Twitter:
Postscript: Israeli's bombings of international media centers is being categorized by Israel as rooting out Hamas terrorists, and by many in the media as targeting journalists.
Of course, the U.S. has been manipulating social media for years. And just as Israel warned reporters not to interview anyone from Hamas, the U.S. is wary of competition from anyone else using social media.
And if any side happens to be using the ultimate dirty trick, that could unfairly shift the media dialog.
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Thank you... Thank you very much. I thought of Elvis when I wrote that.
I bet Elvis thinks you're an asshole...
I want to be associated with hamas.
fuck israel and fuck american military.
Fuck MSM, including Google News (propaganda)
Israel has already lost the social media campaign
All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes. From time immemorial, however, the Jews have known better than any others how falsehood and calumny can be exploited. Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely, that they are a religious community, where as in reality they are a race? And what a race! One of the greatest thinkers that mankind has produced has branded the Jews for all time with a statement which is profoundly and exactly true. Schopenhauer called the Jew "The Great Master of Lies". Those who do not realize the truth of that statement, or do not wish to believe it, will never be able to lend a hand in helping Truth to prevail.
The "Jews" of whom you refer are not a race, they're a tribe or a nation. They come from south eastern Europe, "Kazaria" in earlier times. They are caucasians, not semitics.
A brief history
http://www.tomatobubble.com/middle_east.html
great link, thanks
I just went ahead and gave -1s to all the comments here that refer to 'Jews'.
'Jags' are where it's at. Smoke 'em if you got 'em, or shut the fuck up.
You can pretend in your own mind that you're educating peeps to "A Great Sin"....but, really it's just sooooo passé.
'Tards
what does that change?
Its the politics of Israel which is comtemptible not the ethnicity of its people. THe fact that the Boers were originally dutch didn't make the double-dutched apartheiders dutch debasers, but just fucked up in their mindsets, in "slave" run S.A. The conquistadors were spaniards, they committed genocide but it doesn't make spaniards genociders thru the ages, nor the Mongols. The dixie crowd were slave owners but not all racists, just a minority were truly KKK.
Regime is guilty, never the race per se nor the people. As for the purity of Jewsh beliefs in their racial origins, its just folk-lore not politics. Like the Amish. Who cares. Insignifacnt minorities on the face of the globe as populations. People can at worst be sheeple they follow blindly bad leaders like Stalin, Hitler and GWB; now Nettyah.
The only reason Israel is important on the world stage today is OIL. And the fact that in the USA their lobby holds much power in DC/WS. They are a well knit elitist "racialised" network, both in USA/EUrope, something they have learnt from the ages of being ostracised. Its the reason why the Israeli state has importance as they influence modern Rome. Period. Not in their own right.
Yeah, but don't you find it interesting that this same group was also a fifth column in ancient Rome, as well as modern Rome?
par for the course... as the kids say these days, with their music televisions, internets, and microwaveable dinners
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_EcTYgoh54
consarnit
cold, calculating media footprint really, at the end of the day we have both the extreme of playing the victim and of glorying in undisputable military, economic, and cultural supremacy
but they convinced a bunch of Christians with some heretical mumbo jumbo like that rot about people getting beamed up to the starship secondprize and the rest is WW2-era global stage engineering
they are making the loudest noise, have the most metrics etc. but as we all know today with increasing certainty, the world revolves inaudibly around the creators of new values. the cacophony falls increasingly Only upon the ears of the already blind and the very ramparts of our hijacked fourth estates the world over have become like ape-architectures and laughingstocks to us.
they are ostensibly winning many battles within the perimeter of the old media empire, they have superb traction with fluoride-heads and 501c3 church goers, but something stirs external to this clusterfuck and it is a strident, awake (all too awake) group of humans who, metaphysics or otherwise, see the game for what it is.
were not suckers
only suckers will continue to eat this buffet of lies they are outputting
great job totally calling them on their bullshit shenanigans GDubs (all leading up to...)
and now back to work
So what is it that all fluoride heads and 501(c)3 church-goers have in common germane to the topic at hand? I'm missing something.
(And are fluoride heads the folks who want it in the water, removed from the water, drink fluoridated water or bottled water with fluoride actually or imaginarily removed, exclusively?)
That link is to a satirical left wing Israeli show that is taking the piss out of the Nationalistic right-wing mind set.
Americans really don't get irony.
So, nobody hates us for our irony*? (#Winning!) Thank Jemimah!!
<I reserve the right to revisit this idea in posts here on ZH in the foreseeable**+ future.>
**is that really a word? Who the fuck can trust their spellchecker since Bernanke(FUCK YOU) took over?
Israel wins!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEjAftXcy6w
F-ing terrorists.
You mean those who in 1881 AD conspired in far away lands to take over the "vacant" lands in Levant and launched the first Aliyah?
sure thing man, and their master is most pleased... http://rense.com/1.imagesH/palake_dees.jpg