The issues of politics in social media: Israeli-Palestinian conflict
ILLUSTRATION: TAYLOR CALLERY, Wall Street Journal
Please understand that I do have a personal bias in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the bellow posts do showcase some of that bias.
Social media has become a powerful tool to influence politics around the world. This tool as many can be used for positive impacts and negative.
In my global politics class we are currently studying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We have focused on the news in the last several days as well as the history of the conflict. when we looked at how social media is involved in the conflict, the students were taken aback. This is because of the use of social media to promote violence. This of course in not the only usage in this conflict, but it is a powerful one that overshadows the outcries for peace.
This can be seen in this biased post in The Jerusalem Journal:
This can showcase the worst in what social media can influence, on the other hand there is the social media pushes that use another way to protest and cause political change like this one, though the website name is an issues.
https://electronicintifada.net/content/palestinian-youth-fight-back-social-media/27866
The reason the website name is an issue, is because an Infada (which means to push out), has been a way to try to get Israeli’s to leave Israel and push them out of the land.
In this topic, social media has been used as a weapon to polarize and to promote violence, on both sides.
What this boils down to is that social media and using it in political issues can be a very powerful tool, The concerns are over how it is used and what that means for the groups effected.