"When war goes online"
Thoughts on the spread of misinformation throughout the Israel-Hamas war.
Like so many, I’ve struggled to balance the right amount of information intake these past three and a half heavy, hurtful weeks. Anger, grief, helplessness, pain... I felt compelled to write about what’s been going through my head and how to make sense of this inconceivably massive, ongoing tragedy that’s resulting – and will continue to result – in so much loss of life. But more specifically, I wanted to make sense of the stories we are each telling ourselves about the Israel-Hamas war.
Right now, social media is loud. If your feed has looked anything like mine lately, it’s quite a lot of people seemingly yelling into the ether and shoving a bunch of infographics on your screen. They might be making you feel bad for not taking a stand, which in their eyes, means reposting a similarly-stanced infographic. They’re telling you to “educate yourself,” which usually means reading information to make sure you’re on their side.
And yet, it makes sense that people head to social media in times of crisis. It’s a virtual town hall, a place to commiserate and know that crushing violence of the world is on other people’s minds just as much as it is on yours. But as we know, these are also places that encourage escalation, outrage and circulation… and by design. They reward and prioritize posts’ engagement over reliability or accurate information. And as Vox senior tech reporter A.W. Ohlheiser wrote not long after the October 7th invasion: “when war goes online, the churn of good and bad information is supercharged by the stakes.”
I’ve been thinking about that phrase: when war goes online. War has always been about weaponizing information, using state-sponsored tactics to manipulate civilians, turning them against each other, diverting attention and attempting to justify senseless violence. Social media has undeniably made this kind of propagandizing hyperaccesible, reaching millions in seconds. Part of that means “proof” becomes a weapon of war, as well. We’ve seen this extensively with the war in Ukraine; in one of many examples, Russia falsely claimed last year that Ukrainian forces in Donbas were planning violent attacks and used fake, manipulated videos to “‘prove” it.
Here’s a quick reminder of the kinds of misinformation and disinformation that spreads. We use these terms interchangeably, but the distinctions do matter. Misinformation is false or incorrect information. It’s something you’ve seen on social media and retweeted or reposted because it’s so horrendous that you need to share… but you don’t know that it’s actually false. Disinformation is deliberately spread to deceive people; it is intentionally misstating the facts, and usually the person or entity spreading it has some kind of motive in doing so. The most destructive purveyors of disinformation are governments. Remember the Pentagon Papers, revealing lies that led the US to go to war with Vietnam? Yep, that was disinformation. You can see how disinformation spreads into misinformation very, very quickly. And obviously, it’s a very important tool in war. People can hand-pick information that supports their side easily – often spreading misinformation without knowing that it is disinformation.
If you feel that this is exhausting to absorb– how do we know what is true?! – then I promise, I’m right there with you. While working as a producer on “What A Day,” my team and I have grappled on a daily basis with how to hack through the overgrown jungle of misinformation and disinformation to make sure what we’re reporting is accurate, verified information – always. And the stakes are high. The more often that we have to issue a correction in our published work, the less trust our audience will have in our work.
An example of misinformation from the war earlier on: a report was perpetuated that Hamas beheaded 40 babies; a reporter from the Israeli news outlet i24 tweeted that IDF soldiers told her that they’d seen 40 babies and children killed in the Kfar Aza kibbutz by Hamas. In the days that followed, it morphed into a claim that babies were being “beheaded.” Western media picked up the claim, which spread like wildfire, even though the Israeli armed forces said they could not verify this. President Biden said even he’d seen the photos of the babies. But then, the White House walked back his claim. Another confusing bit of this event… Was Biden intentionally spreading information he knew wasn’t verified, or did he truly believe it? Sometimes, even that is unclear.
This is what happened during the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq, as most anyone who remembers that period in 2003 will tell you. It was a formidable time, the post-9/11 nation shimmering with unity and American patriotism and white-hot rage. But there was severe polarization, manipulated by U.S. intelligence – a story that was sold to the American people as the only correct answer. George W. Bush and his sidekick Vice President Dick Cheney told the American people that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that directly threatened the United States. We know that this was a lie, straight to the faces of the American people, one that even the intelligence that the Bush administration referred to could not prove. The ensuing war resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 Americans, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and instability in the region that is largely believed to have contributed to the rise of ISIS. Government intelligence – and any state-sponsored media, at that – with stakes in war is not unbiased information. It can easily be politicized and weaponized. It is not guaranteed to be objective.
And again, the line between misinformation and disinformation in the case of the Iraq war is fraught. David Corn wrote in Mother Jones: “This self-delusion argument—we believed what we said—is often packaged with the contention that the Bush-Cheney crowd rendered their decisions on the basis of flawed intelligence that stated Iraq had WMDs, and, thus, these leaders did not intentionally misrepresent the threat. But this is a phony argument.”
I was moved to write because I am terrified about the amount of misinformation and disinformation that people have absorbed. When a situation is a matter of life or death, and people living far away have personal connections to the violence (common with wars fueled by religion), it’s easy to share propaganda that plays into your perspective. This war has highlighted what we know to be true – that we live in a hyper-polarized cultural and political moment. When polarization occurs, at this extent, it becomes very difficult for people to understand that many things are actually more nuanced than they are presented... and the stories that the governments publicly tell encourage people to forget that nuance.
And of course, we’ve seen the information wars crystal clear with the tragic explosion at the al-Ahli Arab Hospital on October 17th. In the Arab world, the narrative is that it was an Israeli strike on the hospital. In the American and Israeli media, it’s that it was indisputably a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket; there’s intelligence and a tape. As we navigated this coverage at work, I stayed far away from the video proof put out by Israeli media and gave more weight to journalists I knew were reporting on the ground or working through fact-checking systems (I’ve been particularly impressed with Al Jazeera and The Washington Post’s coverage so far). Videos are easily manipulated and edited – refer back to the examples of Russia editing videos and U.S. intelligence lies. And likewise… if Hamas put out video proof, I’d take it with the same grain of salt. But I do trust the in-depth analysis by reporters and researchers who have cast significant doubts on the claims that Israel was not responsible. (Al Jazeera investigation, New York Times investigation, UN report that states Israel issued two warnings of an imminent strike on the hospital, Forensic Architecture investigation).
It’s excruciating to not know things. Our brains are designed to solve puzzles, fill in the gaps, assign right and wrong, good guy, bad guy. Propaganda plays on this biological urge of ours to know.
Being actively anti-war starts with the information we allow ourselves to absorb and what we share on our platforms. Knowing this, the first fearless and anti-war action we can take is getting as close to the truth as possible, and admitting when we can’t.
I’ve compiled some recommended readings in relation to this war. I know I can speak for so many of us when I say that the devastation of this war is unspeakable, but I’ve somehow found reading on the history of this centuries-long conflict to be really illuminating.
I’ve produced and carefully tailored much of the coverage this week on “What A Day.” We’ve had on several guests who give great context to this war and its history, so I do hope you’ll listen (following/subscribing to our pod is hugely helpful as well too!):
The War Next Door – UC Law SF professor breaks down the different regional players in this war and what we could expect from a potential Israeli ground invasion of Gaza.
A Dark Day For Maine – Jewish organizer, Eva Borgwardt, of IfNotNow explains the rationale for a ceasefire.
Articles:
Kaddish for the Soul of Judaism: Genocide in Palestine
“A Desperate Situation Getting More Desperate”: An Interview with Rashid Khalidi