The social media war

If you don't live on an iceberg you've probably heard about the war in Gaza between Israel and the Hamas. Since this is not a political blog, I am not going to discuss here my personal opinions on the situation or anyone's else, but rather focus on a new phenomena that accompanies this war, and this is a parallel war on the international public's opinion via social networks.

Obviously efforts to change the public opinion have been done in past wars all over the world, but before the advent of social networks this was a task reserved for professionals such as diplomats, PR specialists and of course various media outlets, which may try or not try to be objective and might succeed in that or not...

But now, basically everyone can be a reporter, if not to a wide audience as a TV channel, then to his own social network, which can be not that small, and of course people in your network, each have their own network and so on.

The most basic thing you can do for example is change your status in your social networks, telling shortly about what you're going through and then everyone in your network sees that. You can also post pictures and video from your area. Mobile plays a big part here, since you can basically tweet or update your facebook account from mobile, send pictures etc. - and sometimes especially in war zones, mobile can be more accessible than the PC.

Anyway, these online and mobile individual initiatives happen all the time and have some effect, but what's more interesting are the more coordinated initiatives, which at least I am seeing for the first time in this war, that some call the "first social war" (Probably sounds too nice for a war, but of course the intention is just for the war over PR).

For example, people on facebook started posting pictures describing moments from the war, and tagging them as if they and their friends are in the picture, and asking more and more people to tag themselves in. This of course gets the effect that anyone who has a friend "tagged" in this picture will see the picture in his facebook updates and wonder "Hey, what's joe doing in this picture?...", which will probably lead to opening the picture and seeing the message the original sender intended to send.

Another good example, are Facebook applications. Yes, people have actually created facebook applications to help spread the word about their side of the story. So, at first there was a facebook application which sends updates in your name regarding how many Qassam rockets fell in Israeli cities, hundred of thousands installed the app in their profile, and due to that success an opposing facebook application was published focusing of course on what's happening on their side of the border, which attracted about the same attention.

Blogging is also done a lot on both sides, some as individual initatives, and some in a more orderly fashion, like a project I heard about that allows Israeli teenagers from the south (where the rockets fall) to write about their experiences during the war. I even saw a report on a joint blog between people from both sides of the border.

And of course, don't get me started on the facebook groups... I think there's not a day going by where I don't receive an invitation to support in one way or the other...

But maybe the most surprising thing is the use of officials in the social media space. Maybe it's not that shocking news as even Barack Obama has used Twitter in his campaign. Currently I am aware of a twitter press conference the Israeli consulate in NY, and also the IDF's spokesperson YouTube channel (An army that releases official videos of its activities on YouTube... who could have seen this one coming?...)

Anyway, there's not a lot more I can say without getting political, I feel I have been walking on eggs to balance the whole post even as it is, but the message I wanted to convey is that social networks will probably play part also in future wars throughout the world as the voice of people, which is sometimes not the same as the voice of the government or the voice of the professional press.

P.S. - I didn't link or specify the exact names of blogs, applications or sites on purpose. If you want to find it, I will name one site for you: google.com ...