What happened at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City is the perfect example of how information and reality are distorted in the age of social media. Researcher Caitlin Chin-Rothmann: The only solution is to invest in moderation
Let’s test it: Who fired the rocket at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza on Tuesday, October 17? How many victims were there in this attack? Hamas? Islamic Jihad? The army of Israel? Ten dead? Fivehundred? Your answers might depend on the country you come from, the social networks you are subscribed to and the newspapers you read.
Truth being the first casualty in war is certainly nothing new, but the Al-Ahli Hospital case has become the perfect example of how social media has come to play a fundamental and dangerous role in manipulating narrative and reality: It always happened, but never As we have seen an unprecedented derailment of facts in recent weeks, which also involved newspapers, Caitlin Chin-Rothmann, researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, tells us.
On Tuesday evening, October 17, news arrived that a hospital in Gaza City had been bombed. The Palestinian Ministry of Health (Hamas) released a statement accusing the Israeli army of a massacre of 500 civilians. There are virtually only Palestinian journalists in Gaza – a very important window into the Strip – but there are no Israeli or independent correspondents to cover what is happening. Four days after the explosion, the dynamics of the massacre and even those responsible are still unclear. At the moment we have some clues, some of which are much more obvious than others. We have several videos in which it appears that a rocket fired from Gaza, attributed to Islamic Jihad, accidentally hit the hospital (not all analysts agree). We have the dimensions of the crater left by the rocket through which we try to understand the weapon used; We are working to reconstruct the number of deaths, which appears to be much lower than that initially reported.
Immediately after the explosion, many media outlets, including authoritative ones, attributed the blast to an Israeli bombing and took Hamas’ words at face value. The websites of some international newspapers opened as follows: Gaza, Israel bombs a hospital: 500 dead. Only later did doubts and contradictory versions arise. But by now the social chain had taken over her narrative, her truth, and forced it on her. A short circuit that threatens to become incurable and that no further real evidence is likely to defuse. So if you follow an Israeli Telegram group in the Hamas state, if you are Belgian and have a profile on Tik Tok, you may have been reached by Israeli government content that says, “Have you seen?” Hamas kill their people.
In a divisive conflict like that between Israel and Palestine, the social and fanatical effect is as automatic as it is devastating. This makes the public discourse extremely polarized, objective and far removed from the reality of the facts, which, as always, are more complex than the slogans circulating on Instagram. Both Netanyahu’s government and the Hamas terrorists are very aware of the power of a position and know that the war cannot only be fought on the field.
Putin and Zelensky also use social media as a propaganda weapon, but this time we have seen an unprecedented rise in violent and biased content, explains Chin-Rothmann. And he continues: In the last few weeks, Hamas has grown exponentially online. The organization relies on Telegram because it is banned on the most used social networks in the West. To understand: Since October 7th, the number of followers of one Hamas account has increased from 200,000 to 800,000, and another from 60,000 to 500,000. Even if it is banned on Meta, TikTok and YouTube, the messages republished by private users are not always intercepted and so we are seeing a proliferation of propaganda videos with violent and misleading content everywhere.
An investigation by Politico Europe explains how Netanyahu also uses social media for his propaganda. As an example, he cites a photo that was widely distributed: As we write, we tremble. This is a contribution from the Israeli government, which has launched an urgent campaign targeting key Western countries to garner support for their military response. Politico writes: Propaganda campaigns during wars are nothing new. But paying for online advertising that targets specific countries and specific populations is an additional step and is now one of the most important tools available to governments to ensure their messages reach a larger number of users.
Added to this is the algorithm effect. This mechanism: if you watch videos of kittens, your feed will be filled with videos of cats, if you watch videos of renovated houses, your feed will be filled with villas, and if you watch videos of children killed in the bombings in Gaza have been, you will just look at similar posts and you will probably never come across images of Israeli hostages. And vice versa.
But how can you defend yourself? Let’s take the example of . Meta and YouTube have also laid off many people from their moderation teams, says Chin-Rothmann. Platforms must prioritize investing in resources that seriously address content moderation, including both technological and human solutions. There is also a problem: most of the moderation prefers the English language, while much of the published content is written in other languages, as was the case with the war between Israel and Hamas.
However, controlling via Telegram is significantly more difficult. Given that Russian Pavel Durov’s social network is based on non-control and freedom of expression. It is important that governments also begin working on laws and agreements that regulate the Wild West of information, and it is important to invest in social media education in schools. The European Union is moving in this direction. Even in this war, he called on Meta and Google to monitor the accuracy of content, a reminder that saw the two companies remove false accounts and posts related to Hamas.
Some questions need to be answered as soon as possible: Can a government, even if it is at war, pay to promote some of its content? Can a terrorist group have the ability to spread their messages?
This conflict, analysts explain, is forcing us to rethink the way we create, share and read information. It will mark an important point in content management, not just in times of crisis.
October 20, 2023 (modified October 20, 2023 | 6:11 p.m.)
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