Israel unquestionably has the military advantage in its ongoing conflict with Hamas. But in the fight to control the public narrative of the conflict, Israel\u2019s edge seems to be slipping.<\/p>\n
In previous rounds of conflict, the Israeli government was often able to capitalize on its widely followed official social media channels, as well as statements by leaders, to help shape the narrative in its favor, portraying itself as a nation unjustly under attack with the sole goal of defending itself.<\/p>\n
But this time around,\u00a0<\/strong>Palestinians speaking out against the Israeli occupation and its overwhelming military bombardment of Gaza have had far more success in telling their side of the story on social media \u2014 eroding Israel\u2019s edge in the battle of perspectives and gaining a rapt audience in the US.<\/p>\n From making solidarity videos on\u00a0TikTok<\/a>\u00a0to using\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0to organize international protests to posting videos to\u00a0Instagram<\/a>\u00a0showing Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, Palestinians and those around the world sympathetic to their plight have made social media a central weapon in the narrative fight against Israel. Those weapons are deployed on many fronts: using different platforms to target multiple audiences \u2014 in the region and around the world \u2014 while also using apps to coordinate actions among themselves.<\/p>\n The majority use it to counter the Israeli government\u2019s claims and promote a pro-Palestinian narrative, though some take to social media\u00a0<\/strong>to praise the actions of Hamas.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like a TikTok intifada,\u201d said Michael Br\u00f6ning, executive director of the German think tank Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung\u2019s office in New York, using the Arabic term used to describe previous Palestinian uprisings.<\/p>\n Social media played a\u00a0central role<\/a>\u00a0in past Israel-Gaza wars,\u00a0<\/strong>where clips on YouTube and messages on Facebook and Twitter aimed to report events in real time. But the emergence of new platforms like\u00a0Telegram and TikTok<\/a>\u00a0have allowed more \u2014 and younger \u2014 people to engage with this flare-up online. And now that\u00a0social media platforms are a key delivery system for news consumption<\/a>, many on the apps can experience the complexities of the region in real time, muddying the usual easy storylines.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a penetration of the mainstream narrative,\u201d said Marwa Fatafta, a Berlin-based policy analyst at Al-Shabaka, a Palestinian-focused think tank headquartered in New York City. \u201cPeople are able to see with their own eyes, without being censored, what\u2019s going on minute by minute.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The post The \u201cTikTok intifada\u201d<\/a> appeared first on Al-Shabaka<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Usually Palestinians and their allies struggle to have their narrative break through online. Not anymore.<\/p>\n The post The \u201cTikTok intifada\u201d<\/a> appeared first on Al-Shabaka<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173995"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173996,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173995\/revisions\/173996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\r\nThis content originally appeared on Al-Shabaka<\/a> and was authored by Marwa Fatafta.
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