Israel engages in social media warfare this time

Haaretz:

Israel used to be painfully behind the curve in its Internet-based efforts to influence world opinion. It took an image-battering during both the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead for the government to realize that the era of controlling public information in wartime was dead and gone.

For too long, the Israel Defense Forces and government censors tried, in vain, to keep information to a minimum and released it at carefully timed press conferences. The result: Israel got clobbered by the other side, which dominated the media during Jerusalem's long silences. Those of us who pioneered English-language blogging from Israel in those early days found ourselves sending our small bits of Israeli perspective into a sea of sympathy for the Lebanese and Gazans whose international supporters wisely tapped this new tool to shape the narrative of the conflict.

Later on, turf wars between the various government bodies - the Government Press Office, the IDF spokespeople, the Foreign Ministry, the Defense Ministry - led to a less-than-unified message. The various missteps sparked sharp criticism by supporters, of Israel's efforts to make its case, illustrated by the poor handling of the Turkish flotilla incident in May 2010.

To its credit, Israel has learned from past mistakes and in this conflict use is being made of every platform. The country's communication apparatus has been doing battle in an aggressive and coordinated fashion, utilizing its army of eager volunteers to plead, post and Tweet its case internationally via prose, pictures, and video.

Jess Nowlin, an enterprising young high-tech guy, set up a social media team inside the Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs, complete with a "situation room" full of volunteers tweeting and Facebooking in various languages - with others pitching in from their homes - all under the slogan of "Israel Under Fire."

Some of the viral campaigns have been very successful, such as the Facebook graphic "What Would You Do?" created by the IDF, showing the Statue of Liberty, Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower and Sydney Opera House with missiles raining down on them, accompanied by the message "Share this if you think Israel has the right to self-defense." The picture has been shared more than 51,000 times.

Now that Israel has become more adept at using the social media, it has become the object of new criticism: Israel is making its case too aggressively, too tastelessly, and with too much glee and macho swagger.

Wired Magazine referred to it as Israel's "hyper-pugnacious social media push," while Michael Koplow grimly warned in the magazine Foreign Policy: "Crowing about killing anyone or glorifying Israeli operations in Gaza is a bad public relations strategy insofar as it feeds directly into the fear of Israel run amok with no regard for the collateral damage being caused. Rather than convey a sense that Israel is doing a job that it did not want to have to do as quickly and efficiently as possible, the IDF's Twitter outreach conveys a sense of braggadocio that is going to lead to a host of problems afterward."

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There is more.

I don't get Koplow's point.  Is he suggesting the Islamic world is not going to like Israel anymore?  Or is he saying the anti Israel left in the West is going to think less of Israel?  

I have been one who was critical of Israel's lack of a media strategy in the past.  I think they are on the right track this time and being the kind of result oriented society they are, they will fine tune it and be more effective going forward.   The secret to an effective media strategy is the use of inarguable points in your indictment of the other side.  Sifting through all the potential points for the ones that are inarguable is a worthwhile way of editing a messaging strategy.

The "What Would You Do?" campaign is an effective way of putting western governments on the spot.  I have noticed that they have been much less critical of Israel during this conflict because it is so hard to defend Hamas's use of rocket attacks on non combatants.  Only the Islamic religious bigots would think that was a good idea, and by supporting Hamas, they discredit their own movement.