Rebecca L. Stein has a great post on the London Review of Books blog about Israel's attempts to use social media as a "PR and counterinsurgency" tool. From the wonderfully titled "The Other Wall":
The shift away from an official military idiom towards the language of personalised informality hasn’t been easy for the IDF. Facebook, with its high level of interactivity, is thought to present the best opportunity but also the biggest obstacle. The standard Facebook template, with a ‘wall’ which anyone can write on, is thought to be unfeasible, because of the barrage of comments expected from detractors. During the 2008-9 Gaza incursion, the IDF’s YouTube channel was initially left open to comments: it was closed the next day. IDF programmers are currently at work on an alternative, more tightly controlled template. Questions posted to the Facebook wall by everyday users will be screened and approved in advance, and then answered by IDF spokesmen; from there, users will be invited to participate in an open discussion forum.
A graphic from the Israeli movement to end US support for the Israeli occupation. (Credit: Michal Vexler)
Officials admit to being overwhelmed and understaffed when it comes to social media: just one person monitors the Foreign Ministry’s Arabic Facebook page, for example, and only during business hours. At the end of March, the Israeli Government Press Office took down its Facebook page two days after it launched, because it couldn’t cope with the wall posts of ‘anti-Israeli propagandists and hate spreaders’: comments like ‘Israel operates an entrenched system of racial apartheid’ had been rampant, much to the confusion of loyal subscribers who called for more active monitoring. In the same week, however, the state scored a Facebook victory when the site agreed to remove a page entitled ‘The Third Palestinian Intifada’ in response to pressure from Israel’s Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Ministry and heightened public anxiety about the ways that Facebook was providing a platform for anti-Israeli incitement.
It’s still far from clear, however, how much control the state will be able to exert over Facebook and other social media sites. ‘We cannot but be impressed,’ the IDF spokesman Avi Benayahu recently said, ‘at how Western technology harms regimes… One cell phone camera can harm a regime more than any intelligence operation can.’ The regimes he had in mind were those toppled or threatened by popular uprisings in the Arab world. When I asked Israeli officials about the use of social media by anti-occupation activists, Jewish and Palestinian, on both sides of the Green Line, they didn’t want to talk about it. And none of them noted the resonance between the metaphorical Facebook wall and the concrete Separation Wall, both of which represent attempts by the state to control the political playing field.
A fragile tightly controlled ideology such as Zionism whose memes are so often in conflict with reality has a real struggle in the open internet.
They need to recruit more richard wittys.
Absolutely, I’d recommend they clone Richard Witty and his many skills. That will greatly help them to “put a human face” on Facebook. Oh yeah.
, “I’d recommend they clone Richard Witty “
They did! Don’t you read the comments from Guilty Feat?
An excellent link, Adam. One section, which described the IDF’s own Facebook page, jumped out at me:
What do (some of) the pro-Israel visitors to Mondoweiss who whine that hasbara does not get enough bandwidth here think of how the IDF censors its site?
This is precisely what Eben Moglen rails against.
the state scored a Facebook victory when the site agreed to remove a page entitled ‘The Third Palestinian Intifada’ in response to pressure from Israel’s Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Ministry and heightened public anxiety about the ways that Facebook was providing a platform for anti-Israeli incitement. [Who's "public?"]
If Mr. Zuckerberg caved to foreign government pressure on this, god help the future of any nascent freedom movement that would rely on Mr. Zuckerberg’s callow understanding of rights.
It is kind of hilarious how Israel lauds Facebook and social networking when it can use it for its own purposes. However, should others who do not have the Zionist bus pass do the same, they are to be censored and shut down. Yes, democracy Israeli-style, where only they get to play.
And isn’t Israel’s idea of ‘friendship’ creepy? Like a protection racketeer, they put an arm around you and leer about how you are the best of friends.
• Speaking of which, any idea how to remove “facebook friends”, or actually unfriending the barged-in squatters? Mysteriously nested by the rogue operators of “social network”! Where pertinent features, necessary to implement vital tasks, nowhere to be found. Instead, one being confronted with various nasty impediments, each time in succession. Such as sporadically compelled restrictions of 420 characters max for updates/comments. Filtered/deleted activities list, posted links amputation, etc. Instituted to frustrate targeted facebook users!
While the launched a year ago, somewhat controversial topic “Ovarian Cancer Wrongly Diagnosed Casualties“, remained dormant. No wonder, when the published content didn’t appear on any search engine findings in spite of the ticked all the relevant check-boxes. Patently pointing to the requested public search provision with the search engines indexing. However hell-bent operators were adamant to keep the subject matter out-of-sight out-of-mind.
Perhaps Israel should just put a big smiley face wearing a beanie on its Facebook page and beneath it: an Adam Sandler click cartoon voiced by Sandler himself rapping hasabara, and fielding slightly awkward questions. Any really awkward questions or statements appearing on the wall would simply vanish.