Hasbara 2.0: Israel’s Public Diplomacy in the Digital Age

The Internet has been a counter-public space for Palestinian liberation politics for over a decade, and digital technologies have become an increasingly important tool for solidarity groups across the world. However, the Israeli state and Zionist supporters worldwide are harnessing the same technologies and platforms to mobilize technology primarily to increase pro-Israel sentiments. The aims of this article are to examine hasbara [Israeli public diplomacy] through an exploration of similar diplomacy programmes; to illustrate how social media have affected the basic algorithms of hasbara; and to probe the assertions of hasbara in the light of pro-Palestinian solidarity. Through a study of public diplomacy, this article critically analyzes hasbara as a site of contestation and a method that is hampered by contradictions. On the one hand, there has been a massive growth in hasbara in recent years—indicated by the increase in funding for it and by its professionalized and centralized character; and on the other hand, hasbara has attracted sharp critiques in Israel for its reputed failures. To understand this contradiction, hasbara must be placed within the context of Israel’s settler-colonialism, which sets the state apart from other ‘post-conflict’ states. This article reviews the methods utilized in hasbara, as well as their readjustment in the context of recent wars. Events in 2014 illustrate that hasbara actually destabilizes Israel’s diplomacy. Online journalism and the suppression of solidarity for Palestine together stimulate more criticism and, in turn, help to shift public opinion. Paradoxically, therefore, adjustments (‘hasbara 2.0’) have underlined the image of Israel as a colonial power engaged in violent occupation

Who let the trolls out? Towards understanding state-sponsored trolls

Recent evidence has emerged linking coordinated campaigns by state-sponsored actors to manipulate public opinion on the Web. Campaigns revolving around major political events are enacted via mission-focused ?trolls." While trolls are involved in spreading disinformation on social media, there is little understanding of how they operate, what type of content they disseminate, how their strategies evolve over time, and how they influence the Web's in- formation ecosystem. In this paper, we begin to address this gap by analyzing 10M posts by 5.5K Twitter and Reddit users identified as Russian and Iranian state-sponsored trolls. We compare the behavior of each group of state-sponsored trolls with a focus on how their strategies change over time, the different campaigns they embark on, and differences between the trolls operated by Russia and Iran. Among other things, we find: 1) that Russian trolls were pro-Trump while Iranian trolls were anti-Trump; 2) evidence that campaigns undertaken by such actors are influenced by real-world events; and 3) that the behavior of such actors is not consistent over time, hence detection is not straightforward. Using Hawkes Processes, we quantify the influence these accounts have on pushing URLs on four platforms: Twitter, Reddit, 4chan's Politically Incorrect board (/pol/), and Gab. In general, Russian trolls were more influential and efficient in pushing URLs to all the other platforms with the exception of /pol/ where Iranians were more influential. Finally, we release our source code to ensure the reproducibility of our results and to encourage other researchers to work on understanding other emerging kinds of state-sponsored troll accounts on Twitter.https://arxiv.org/pdf/1811.03130.pdfAccepted manuscrip

Teaching Twitter: Re-enacting the Paris Commune and the Battle of Stalingrad

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Tomorrow’s Wars and the Media

Distilling lessons from the author’s book, The Media Offensive: How the Press and Public Opinion Shaped Allied Strategy during World War II, this article provides applicable suggestions for the US military today. As in World War II, the press is both a weapon and a possible vulnerability in modern warfare. Consequently, this article offers practical suggestions for how the press can be used by public affairs officers, commanders, and policymakers to achieve victory in coming conflicts

Peace journalism in 140 characters: A qualitative analysis of the use of Twitter by Israel and Palestine news sources during Operation Brother’s Keeper

This study examined the use of Twitter as a means of message dispersion during Operation Brother’s Keeper, the 2014 Israel Defense Forces’ engagement that was the prelude to the larger conflict Operation Protective Edge. Specifically, the question at the center of this research was whether or not the news sources from either side of the conflict use the social media platform to leverage messages that were framed in terms of Norwegian sociologist and peace researcher Johan Galtung’s peace journalism, as described by Annabel Lynch and Jake McGoldrick in their book Peace Journalism (2005). Using qualitative research methods, this body of research examined the use of the principles of peace journalism via Twitter by six sources (three from each side of the conflict) during the entirety of the Israel Defense Force’s Operation Brother’s Keeper. The results of this research indicated a lack of peace journalism reporting styles with tendencies of war journalism being more prevalent

Imagine there is war and it is tweeted live: an analysis of digital diplomacy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The interplay between use of force in conflicts and involved parties’ rhetorical efforts to determine related international discourse has long been subject of research and debate. However, how and why states adopt digital media in conflict, as well as how the emerging opportunity for “Digital Diplomacy” influences their actual communication warrants further consideration. This question raised in public, media and academia during Israel’s eight-day operation “Pillar of Defense” in Gaza in November 2012, when the military confrontation between Israel and Hamas was mirrored in a clash on social media as additional battlefield. The presented analysis of Israel’s online performance bases on Ben Mor’s self-presentation framework (2007, 2012), which explains constraints for structure and substance of communication by which states seek to build, maintain or defend their image in home and foreign audiences. Relevant Israeli Twitter feeds are analyzed and results flanked by semi-structured interviews with Israeli communication officials. Accordingly, Israel more than other political actors engages in proactive Digital Diplomacy, expecting benefits of directly reaching crucial publics and providing an alternative story, while accepting a certain loss of control. The constant communication aims at explaining and thus “humanizing” Israel’s militarized image in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, with a focus on hard-power messages (threat scenarios, delegitimization, in-group/ out-group thinking, military instead of political successes) and the absence of political solutions, it is unlikely to convey a peace-oriented image or even – taking a longer view – to prepare the ground for a political solutio

The Zone in Reverse

This essay proposes a reconstruction of the problem of logistics as seen through the prism of Gaza. Questioning the common approach of logistics strictly in terms of the flows that it releases and speeds up, it argues that the Gaza blockade itself constitutes a vast logistical operation. The essay proceeds by setting Gaza’s architecture of confinement against the ‘architecture of flow’ that typically characterises logistical sites around the world. By underlining the material connections between these, the essay calls for an approach of processes of restriction of mobility as a mirror image of the fast-tracking operations that logistics is primarily known for. On this basis, it proposes a notion of logistical power as a mode of power specifically exerted through the production of a differential regime of mobility

The Pro-Palestinian Transnational Advocacy Network in Malaysia: Cooperation and Underlying Motives of Hamas and UMNO

A powerful pro-Palestinian transnational advocacy network has emerged in Malaysia since the Gaza war of 2008-09. Taking the cooperation between the Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia, the Islamist Hamas, and the United Malays National Organisation as an example, I analyze the network and argue that the three actors are engaging there to promote the Palestinian struggle for an independent state but at the same time, each actor is using the network to pursue its own interests

Uncivil Twitter: A sociopragmatic analysis

Language Use in Past and Presen