Israeli Defense Force and Hamas Trading Blow by Blow on Social Media Updates

Propaganda via social media is nothing new, but perhaps becoming more formally utilised and now bringing us to the front line, literally in minutes of the action, with official government sanction.(Assuming all communique are being approved by the information war teams)

Hamas are posting Youtube Videos and Tweets of rocket launches and IDF are socially broadcasting kills of significant Hamas leadership. Nice.

Get straight into the action with IDFSpokesperson on Twitter with choice Tweets such as “When #Hamas members need a place to hide, they run to hospitals. Hamas uses civilians as human shields. pic.twitter.com/dn3tij76”

or Hamas’ Al Qassam brigade Tweeting quite corporate update KPI orientated comments such as:

Al Qassam’s operation “#ShaleStones is going well in achieving historic goals, Liberation of occupied #Palestine started…we are coming #IDF” or pretty to the point “8:30 Al Qassam shelling the occupied city of Ashdod with two Grad missiles #Gaza #GazaUnderAttack #Resistance #ShaleStones#Palestine”

It is only a matter of time until every missile engages a Twitter posting capability a few seconds before detonation and tweets a Victory status and Instagram filtered nosecone camera picture of fleeing civilians, perhaps with a handy geolocation reference so we can watch bombing patterns overlaid on Google Maps. Higher social engagement could follow, perhaps “Sponsor this missile” or “Vote on Targets”?

A triumphant Hamas broadcast a rocket launch on Youtube below.

Wired Cover the phenomena here as do The Guardian

UPDATE: IDF now asking Israeli’s to not mention missile hits on social media for fear that the geotagged status updates allow Hamas to correlate hits to missile launches and improve accuracy.