NEW DELHI: War propaganda entered a whole new dimension
on Wednesday night as the Israeli Defence Forces tweeted a strike in Gaza live.
International news portals said this was the world's first broadcast of an
ongoing military campaign through Twitter.
The IDF flooded
online platforms in its efforts to put out its version of the attack. The
strike, in which senior Hamas leader
Ahmed Jabari was killed, was not only live-tweeted, but also live-blogged on
Tumblr, a blogger's platform. There were also regular updates on video-sharing
website YouTube, while pictures and posters were shared on image-sharing
website Flickr.
Not to be left
behind, Al Qassam Brigade, the military wing of Hamas, also put out their
version of the story from their Twitter account @AlqassamBrigade.
This is how the
operation unfolded through social media websites. Around midnight on Wednesday,
India time, the Israeli Defence Forces launched Operation Pillar of Defense
with surgical strikes into Gaza. On Twitter, tweets about the Israeli strike on
Gaza were accompanied by the hashtag #PillarOfDefense while those about Hamas'
attacks on Israelis were tagged #LifeUnderFire and #Israel Under Fire. A
hashtag is a clickable tag that is used to view tweets from different sources
about a particular subject together.
"The IDF has embarked on an operation against Hamas, an Iranian proxy
responsible for terror attacks on Israel. #Iran #Gaza," @IDFSpokesperson,
the Twitter account of the Israeli defence forces tweeted. It was shortly
followed by a YouTube link of an aerial video that showed the "pinpoint
strike" on Ahmed Jabari's car. Speaking the language of the Internet, they
also posted on their Tumblr and Flickr image streams, posters with text and
infographics - the kind that are commonly found on Facebook.
Such posters
typically give out a piece of information or a message followed by an
exhortation to share it. "Three Israeli civilians were killed this morning
by a rocket fired from Gaza. The IDF will continue to act to ensure the safety
of Israeli citizens and cripple Hamas' terrorist infrastructure in Gaza. Share
this if you think Israel has the right to defend itself," said the text of
one of the many such posters shared online by the Israeli Defence Forces.
While guns
blazed on the ground, attacks and counter attacks took place on the Internet as
well. "#Israel's military kills #Palestinian children in cold blood in
#Gaza, shelling civilians & populated areas #Humanrights," read a
tweet from @AlqassamBrigade. Attached was a picture of officials holding a dead
baby, speaking to the television media. Shortly after the strike, the Al Qassam
Brigade also tweeted directly at the IDF account saying, "@idfspokesperson
our blessed hands will reach your leaders and soldiers wherever they are (You
Opened Hell Gates on Yourselves)". The IDF too had issued a threat before
carrying out the operation in a tweet that read, "We recommend that no
Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above
ground in the days ahead."
Details of the
May 2011 killing of Osama Bin Laden in Operation Geronimo were also made
available through official social media accounts. However, nothing was put out
live.
Sunil Abraham of
Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) says that propaganda has been part and
parcel of modern warcraft. "From Nazi Germany to US during the Gulf War
and this latest example -governments have always co-opted latest technologies
into their propaganda campaigns," he says.
(Source: Kim Arora, TNN Nov 16, 2012, 02.25AM IST
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