As the war between Israel and Hamas drags on, many on both sides have taken to social media to gather information and air their outrage. The impulse to do so is understandable: Political activism on social media provides people with an emotional outlet and gives them a sense that they can do something. The war is awful, and following it generates a sharp psychological need to get involved and do something.
In the past few years, my colleagues and I at UMass Boston’s Applied Ethics Center have been studying the ethics of emerging technologies. I believe that political activism on social media is a counterproductive and sometimes even dangerous form of engagement. Here’s why.
Social media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, YouTube and TikTok are designed to maximize engagement. Their algorithms are tweaked to make sure that users spend a lot of time on them. The best ways to drive engagement are to either show people what they will likely agree with or to show them content that will outrage and shock them.
As a result, the content you will most frequently encounter on social media will either mirror your own views or upset you, or both. In other words, political engagement on social media most often generates no new knowledge while it inflames already raw emotions. When it comes to a conflict as historically convoluted and as emotionally charged as the Israel-Hamas war, those are terrible outcomes.
Getting it wrong on purpose
Then there is the well-known problem of disinformation.
Individuals as well as government agents have been posting false and misleading material to social media at a breathtaking rate since the beginning of the war. Russia, Iran and China have been running disinformation efforts meant to undercut Israel and bolster the image of Hamas. Russia and Iran have, for instance, circulated false information alleging that Israel bombed the Al Ahli hospital in Gaza and that the U.S. supplied the bomb used to destroy it, though most credible news sources agree that it was a misfired rocket from Gaza that hit the site.
Russia, Iran and China are using the war in Gaza to fight their proxy war with the U.S. As a result, the average social media user will be exposed to a great deal of content meant to promote the interests of those countries. Stated differently, you might go to social media for information about the conflict, but what you often end up with is propaganda.
Here are tips for avoiding misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war.
Simple and snappy
Social media is also notoriously bad at mediating complexity. The realities surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are profoundly intricate – politically, historically and morally.
And yet, the very nature of social media platforms, with their space limitations and their calibration toward likes, shares and virality, is antithetical to conveying such complexity. For…