Social Media in Violent Conflicts – Recent Examples

Based on interviews with Swiss journalists who specialise in war and international reportage, this article investigates the extent to which social media impacts on reportage of war and conflict. The interviews examine journalists’ perceptions of the threats and opportunities posed by use of social media in reporting conflict, by investigating how journalists position themselves and their practices within this new media ecosystem. In particular, the interviews explore whether challenges to professional journalism encountered in previous studies of reportage of war and conflict are overcome by the use of social media. It explores if social media can mitigate the effects of military and government restriction of information, changing newsroom dynamics and issues of audience engagement in reportage of conflict. The findings highlight that in the context of war and conflict the dynamism creates opportunities for fast, news dissemination, pluralised voices in reportage and extended audience reach. However, reporters must also negotiate the complexities that fast, multi-medium and multi-sourced information create for reporting practices, especially in terms of verification of information and contextualisation. Thus this article argues that although social media adds dynamism to journalistic environments, this dynamism also brings new levels of complexity to journalistic practice that professional media workers must negotiate.

The media have always played a key role in armed conflicts, even going so far as to be used as weapons themselves. In this paper, I will give an overview of some historical moments in which the media have played a fundamental - and sometimes lethal - role.

Legal Information Management

Technological advancements have revolutionised the social interactions of global society and in turn influenced the means and methods of warfare; increasing the involvement of civilians in hostilities, not only as victims but also as participants. Together with the involvement of multiple state and non-state actors, civilian participation makes these modern conflicts all the more unpredictable, challenging inter alia the traditional notion of direct participation in hostilities established under international law.

This paper attempts to accomplish three things: First, it will outline the ways in which the U.S. military has begun utilizing social media to put a more human face on its divisions as well as open up communications between soldiers, families, and friends; second, it will outline how the military has come to perceive new media as a weapon to be used in the virtual arena of war and information operations, essential to winning the “war of ideas"; finally, this paper shall explore the ways in which the “insurgencies” have begun utilizing new media to fight the lumbering bureaucracies of Western powers, pulling primarily from the cases of the Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006, the Battle of Jenin in 2002, as well as the ever-expanding Web presence of the “insurgency."

International Journal of Communication, 2017

Because Twitter may facilitate interconnectedness among diverse actors—elite and nonelite, inside and outside of a given national community—it can potentially challenge traditional war journalism that has typically been elite-oriented and nationally oriented. The present study examined this potential during the 2014 Gaza–Israel conflict. Based on a content analysis of Twitter messages by Israeli and international journalists, the study suggests that in wartime journalists on Twitter may have agency that can manifest in retweeting critical messages—not necessarily in the language of their national community—and conversing with people outside official power circles. However, institutional, cultural, and national forces still seem dominant, as particularly reflected in messages by journalists who are members of one of the conflicting parties. “Mr. Gates” on Twitter may have more agency than he had decades ago, but seems constrained by virtual national boundaries. By showing the extent ...

Cultural Politics, 2014

There are important differences in how information technology is used in military and social-movement cultures. Militaries use social media in the Human Terrain model and security-police mode for quantifying and controlling social space, in order to meet low-intensity, counterinsurgency, and regime-maintenance goals (or for recruitment and public relations). For social-movement cultures, such as secular Egyptian revolutionaries, 15M (Los Indignados), and Idle No More, social media is an integral part of life; it is context. Unlike these horizontalist movements, military institutions are based on a hierarchical structure that precludes social media from becoming part of their organizational and decision-making culture. For them, social media constitute part of civil society, a commons both virtual and physical. The synergy between computer networks and decentralized social movements is clear when military, social-movement, and network theories and practices are compared. These differ...

Social Media and Society, 2018

Numerous studies address the uses and perceived effects of social media, but a scholarly void exists about how it is framed in the mainstream media. This study fills this void using a content analysis of news items that included references to social media in Israel’s six daily Hebrew-language printed newspapers during the Israel–Gaza war (2014). The papers framed social media primarily as spaces of hate speech and distribution of rumors. Additional salient themes referred to social media as alternative media channels by politicians and celebrities and as arenas of public diplomacy. Social media was rarely portrayed as platforms to orchestrate collective action or to meet the enemy.

Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work - CSCW '13, 2013

In this paper we examine the information sharing practices of people living in cities amid armed conflict. We describe the volume and frequency of microblogging activity on Twitter from four cities afflicted by the Mexican Drug War, showing how citizens use social media to alert one another and to comment on the violence that plagues their communities. We then investigate the emergence of civic media "curators," individuals who act as "war correspondents" by aggregating and disseminating information to large numbers of people on social media. We conclude by outlining the implications of our observations for the design of civic media systems in wartime.

War correspondents work within a networked media environment characterised not only by an explosion of information but also a wide range of actors producing competing narratives and viewpoints. This study examines the ways in which war correspondents enact their professional roles when tweeting from within a conflict zone. The analysis sheds light on the conditions of modern information warfare in the context of reporting from within the Ukraine conflict. It also identifies the emerging social media practices of war correspondents and the different role categories that journalists are adopting on Twitter.

Journalism, 2016

War correspondents work within a networked media environment characterised not only by an explosion of information but also a wide range of actors producing competing narratives and viewpoints. This study examines the ways in which war correspondents enact their professional roles when tweeting from within a conflict zone. The analysis sheds light on the conditions of modern information warfare in the context of reporting from within the Ukraine conflict. It also identifies the emerging social media practices of war correspondents and the different role categories that journalists are adopting on Twitter.