When armies become media: Israel live-blogs and tweets an attack on Hamas. Israel Live-Tweets Its Military Campaign Against Hamas - Mike Isaac - Social. The Israeli Defense Force, the official military arm of the state of Israel, has launched a full-scale combat campaign against Hamas, the Islamist party that governs the Gaza Strip area of the Middle East. But instead of holding an official press conference, as is protocol for events as major as these, the IDF took a different tack. It announced its campaign via Twitter. The original tweet was sent out at approximately 7 am PT, announcing the “widespread campaign on terror sites & operatives in the #Gaza Strip, chief among them #Hamas & Islamic Jihad targets.” You’ll note that whoever is at the helm of the account is versed enough in Twitter language to employ hashtags, one of the many ways users can follow trending topics across the 140-million-strong social network.
As of approximately noon PT, #Gaza, #Hamas and #Israel were all trending keywords across Twitter’s network. It seems, however, that the IDF is using social in a different way entirely. We’re in new territory here. Israel and Hamas deploy Twitter feeds in media war. Israel's attack on Gaza opened a new chapter in the use of social media in warfare, as both the Israeli Defence Forces and Hamas's armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, kept up duelling live Twitter feeds, each giving their side of the conflict. The fact that both Twitter accounts, @IDFSpokesperson and @AlqassamBrigades, launched the live commentaries in English minutes after the drone assassination of the Hamas military commander, Ahmed al-Jabari, underlined the central importance to each side of coralling world opinion in the conflict.
The IDF tweeted the launch of the operation, shortly after announcing the end of the Austere Challenge 12 joint military exercises with US European Command with the words: "All good things must come to an end. " The IDF then tweeted: "The IDF has begun a widespread campaign on terror sites & operatives in the #Gaza Strip, chief among them #Hamas & Islamic Jihad targets. " Propaganda 2.0: Why Israel and Hamas are fighting a war with rockets and tweets. YouTube Blocks Israeli Hamas Assassination Video - Peter Kafka - Media. Israel has gone to war with Hamas in Gaza, and it is using the Internet as a weapon, employing services like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr on its behalf. The idea is familiar to anyone who has a message to push in 2012: Instead of relying on middlemen like the press to convey your story, you can go over their heads, and right to your target audience.
But Internet services themselves are still middlemen, with the ability to block content if they want or need to. Google, for example, has yanked a video posted by the Israeli military yesterday, which apparently recorded a “pinpoint strike” which killed Hamas military leader Ahmed Jabari in his car. A message on the world’s largest video site says the clip has been removed because its content violated YouTube’s Terms of Service. “Sorry about that Update: That was a mistake, YouTube now says. Earlier: I’ve asked YouTube executives to elaborate. And if you want to see the aftereffects of Israel’s strike, YouTube is okay with that, via this AP clip: Israel and Twitter: Where does free speech end and violence begin? Unbelievable: The IDF Has Gamified Its War Blog. Yesterday, when I wrote about the social media campaign that Israel was waging alongside its attack on Hamas, I thought it was interesting.
I thought it was a straightforward and effective way of presenting the cause behind the attack. Whether you thought the offensive was right or wrong, you had to admit the propaganda's effectiveness. Well, day two has changed matters. The IDF Blog now has atrocious gamification badges with points and rewards for sharing the content to social media. For example, if you visit the site 10 times, you get the "Consistent" badge. This game has existed since July. An IDF spokesperson tells ReadWrite that "over the past two days the blog has experienced technical difficulties due to high traffic, and 'IDF Ranks' was temporarily taken down to make necessary adjustments to our systems. The technical reason sounds plausible, although I was on the site pretty early yesterday, and I never saw a trace of it. Israeli Defense Force Responds To Criticism Of Games On Its War Blog. The Israeli Defense Force spokespeople behind the IDF Blog, the @IDFSpokesperson Twitter feed, and the rest of the Operation Pillar of Defense social media campaign were quick and forthcoming in response to my inquiries about the light-hearted game that took over the gravely serious blog yesterday.
I included some of the IDF comments in yesterday's story but I want to look more closely at the rest of their messages. The IDF spokesperson who responded to me explained that "[t]he game 'IDF Ranks' was conceived and launched four months ago ... as part of our efforts to create a interactive community to encourage social interaction generated by the IDF social networks online.
" Basically, it gives you badges and ranks for actively using and sharing the stuff on the blog. Not very fun, but not a big deal. "The IDF blog itself was launched in 2009 and is not a 'war blog,' but rather a site meant to encourage transparency and provide breaking news regarding events in the area," the IDF says. Israel Defense Forces Social Media Head Defends Tweets. Twitter can help 'convey a message of deterrence,' says Israel's IDFSpokesperson.
Israel and Hamas are fighting a war on a new front. This week, they took to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social media to report live on real-world attacks in Gaza... or, depending on who you ask, to spread propaganda. Now, the brains behind @IDFSpokesperson have been revealed. According to the Associated Press, Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich is the woman in charge of the Israeli Defense Forces' brand-new "Interactive Media" branch, a collection of 30 soldiers trained to craft the blog posts, infographics and status updates that comprise Israel's media campaign.
The group was reportedly formed just two months ago, but it's apparently already important to the military's operations. In February, Leibovich told the AP, she'll be departing her other job as international spokeswoman to concentrate on this social media initiative. So what, after all, are the IDFSpokesperson's aims? Meet the Young Soldiers Who Pushed the IDF's Social Media Strategy.
After the first night of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, now almost a week ago, a photograph began circulating around Twitter of a grinning 11-month-old who had been killed by an Israeli missile that landed on his house. Within hours, Avital Leibovich, an Israel Defense Forces spokeswoman, posted a reply of sorts: a photograph of another infant, this one an Israeli girl, wounded by a Hamas rocket in the southern town of Kiryat Malachi. It wasn’t the first skirmish of the virtual war being waged across social media networks by both the Israeli government and Hamas—the real-world hostilities were announced Nov. 14 by the IDF in a tweet trumpeting the death of Hamas leader Ahmed Jabari—but it was an early indication of how the awful life-and-death stakes of war have been reduced to Internet fodder.
The world is by now well aware of the power of social media to help foment and spread popular movements everywhere from Lower Manhattan to the streets of Cairo. Like this article? Gaza violence leads lawmakers to call for shuttering terror groups on Twitter - The Hill's Global Affairs.
IDF social media Battlefield with Hamas.