INTERNET - The Never-Ending War on Social Media

aka "The Selling of War, Violence, and Murder" online.

"Online war of words:  To amplify message, Israel and Hamas fire up social media" PBS NewsHour 8/3/2014

Excerpt

P.J. TOBIA (NewsHour):  As fighting in Gaza moves into a fourth week, a parallel battle is taking place on a different front — waged online through social media.  Both Hamas and Israel are seeking to control the message behind the fighting, and are taking to Twitter, Facebook and other online platforms to influence the public’s perception.

ADEL ISKANDAR:  It is a competition for likes, recommends, tweets, retweets

P.J. TOBIA:  Adel Iskandar is a professor of global communications at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.  He says both sides of the conflict are pursuing similar objectives with online content.

ADEL ISKANDAR:  They realize that their footprint can be much wider, and they can reach sort of the deep crevices and far-out places in online if they’re able to build platforms that are solely their own, that they can control exclusively and send their messages out.

P.J. TOBIA:  Iskandar points to Facebook pages created by Hamas and Israel.

ADEL ISKANDAR:  So pages dedicated to this particular conflict, or in the case of the Israeli Defense Forces, the operation itself, or specific aspects of the operation, specific spokespersons’ offices that derive from the Israeli Defense Forces.

The same goes with Hamas.  Hamas has a very, very integrated system, communications system, not just in terms of a satellite network which broadcasts 24 hours a day, but they also have Facebook pages, dedicated Facebook pages, for each of their brigades as well.