Recently attended the U.S – Islamic World Forum hosted by Brookings. I was asked to present a case study in the working group on how New Media was used during the Gaza War & the Iranian Election unrest. Here is a copy of the presentation – you can see the slide notes if you go through to the page on slideshare directly.
I’ll try and post some of my thoughts from the session later in the week.
My presentation at #media140 in Sydney – Al Jazeera’s online coverage of the #gaza war… which also earned me a pretty cool blog post from the guys at the conference: http://media140.org/?p=722
You can watch the case study on #Gaza here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2498513 (I’ll post a direct shorter link once its online)
The session I presented on Iran can be watched here.
You can also find my comments regarding the importance of context in #iranelection here.
Congrats to the media140 team for putting on a great show.
I was asked to write an article for the Al Jazeera website on the current “war of words” that has taken place online during the conflict in Gaza…
Here is a copy of the article “Waging the web wars”
Waging the web wars
By Riyaad Minty, Al Jazeera’s new media analyst
Propaganda has always played an important role in the way war is waged.
Using the available traditional media platforms – such as television, radio and print – governments have battled for mindshare in an attempt to convince the public that military engagements are serving their best interests.
Over time, new communication technologies have forced governments to realign their propaganda campaigns.
In the modern age of warfare, government spokespersons have provided major news networks the opportunity to engage, question and dissect domestic, foreign and military policies.
However, the recent war in Gaza has pushed the boundaries of traditional media as the debate on the conflict opened a new front – online.
Though television has continued to provide viewers with in-depth coverage of the conflict, it did not sufficiently allow the average, frustrated person on the street to express their views.
War of words
Enter the “social” internet – currently termed “War 2.0” or “War of Words” – where people from around the world used social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to express their opinions to a global audience.
With the internet becoming a battleground of ideas, the average person, armed with a keyboard and an internet connection, became a participant in the conflict.
On December 27, 2008, Israel launched ‘Operation Cast Lead’ against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip. Within minutes of the first missile landing in Gaza, global reactions appeared online.
During the first few days of the war, online discussions were restricted to war of words. Both sides engaged in heated debates and blamed each other for the fatal surge in military operations.
As the discussions grew, attempts were then made by supporters of both sides to establish a coordinated response aimed at combatting the other side’s propaganda.
With this awareness in mind, both Israel and the Palestinians resorted to a variety of media platforms to justify their positions and tactics used during the conflict.
Israeli supporters set up the Help Us Win website, and some Palestinian supporters created Gaza Talk.
Hundreds of groups were created on Facebook by Israelis and Palestinians to create an awareness of the facts as they saw them.
Israeli government reacts
The Israeli government also attempted to capitalise on the online conversations.Realising the importance these mediums play in the propaganda war, they held an unprecedented press conference on Twitter.
The Israeli army also set up a YouTube channel and uploaded videos of some of their air raids on Gaza.
While no official online presence has been established by Hamas, pro-Palestinian supporters have been using videos and images to effectively deliver their message.
The Israeli army showed simple black-and-white videos (without audio) of Hamas-launched rockets, while Palestinians offer vivid videos and images of the chaos and destruction on the ground in Gaza following Israeli air raids.
However, the images from Gaza allowed pro-Palestinian supporters to dominate this online war.
More engaged audiences
The battle to gain public favour is becoming increasingly difficult as governments try to meet the challenges of dealing with a more engaged audience.
On Facebook, hundreds of thousands of people have signed on pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian groups.
The group Let’s Collect 500000 Signatures to Support the Palestinians in Gaza has 630,002 members while the I Support the Israel Defence Forces In Preventing Terror Attacks From Gaza group has 85,308 members.
On Twitter, the tag “#Gaza” has been in the top 10 trending topics since the Gaza war began on December 27.
As the propaganda war enters a new phase, governments now need to fully embrace these new technologies and use them to their benefit.
Until then, online social communities will continue the debates which will likely last well beyond the current war in Gaza.
Following on from my last post- I was asked to go on air again to talk about our new interactive map (second appearence on AlJazeera)… Incase you’ve missed it, our new services are proving to be a fantastic tool in covering the war on Gaza. If you don’t believe me check out what WIRED and NPR had to say….
Getting tweets from the war zone is so 2008. The latest social media advance combines tools like Twitter, text messaging, and online mapping to gather up first-hand reports, straight from Gaza.
Oh and the CEO of twitter, EV, sent out a message referring to our Gaza Twitter Stream….
Getting reviews online is always comforting- however the circumstances under which we rolled out these services aren’t. Lets hope and pray that the killing comes to an end and crisis reporting will no longer be needed…
Here is my interview on AJ:
After a few late nights at the office we have finally launched our interactive map for the situation in Gaza. The folks over at Ushahidi have been fantastic in allowing us to use their crowd sourcing platform for this project…. Our SMS system was set up and is powered by the guys at souktel (thanks to @Katrinskaya from MobileActive for putting us in touch with souktel)
The Ushahidi Engine is a platform that allows anyone to gather distributed data via SMS, email or web and visualize it on a map or timeline. Our goal is to create the simplest way of aggregating information from the public for use in crisis response.
As updates come in on the situation in Gaza, we update the map with the incident. People can have a look at the timeline and map to get a idea of how the entire event has played out from the beginning. The great thing about this platform is the “crowd sourcing” part… People in Gaza and around the world can submit reports through to the site in 4 ways:
1) Report an incident directly at: http://labs.aljazeera.net/warongaza
2) via SMS (text message) – If you’re in Palestine and on the Jawwal network, you can text in your report to the number: 37191
or if you’re anywhere else in the world you can send a text to: +45609910303
All messages need to start with the word GAZA so that we can track it… (eg: GAZA 5 aid trucks just arrived at the Rafa crossing)
3) If you’re on twitter*, you can submit a report by simply replying to our official AlJazeera account with your report @AJGaza (eg: @AJGaza airstrike just resumed in Khan Yunus)…
*If you still dont know what twitter is head over to CommonCraft and watch the great video that explains it
4) If you have images or video, you can email them through to us at yourviews@aljazeera.net or upload them here.
I do wish the war ends soon so we dont have to actually test the platform out…. With the way its currently looking the end is not in sight, so lets just hope we can provide a great resource of information for the war.
Big ups to the other guys in our New Media team who worked through the nights to get this up…. Its amazing what one tweet can do (got in touch with @whiteafrican via twitter for this)
You can read more about the deployment on the Ushahidi Blog
Life's Little Boxes 