The Role of Social Media on the Israel-Palestine War
- Spyglass News
- Dec 17, 2023
- 5 min read
The well known research organization, Pew Research Center, did a study in April of 2023 about how many teenagers use a variety of social media platforms. It was concluded that approximately 67% of teenagers use TikTok, 62% use Instagram, and 59% use Snapchat; along with this, 23% use Twitter and 14% use Reddit. And there is no doubt that social media is highly influential on the ways an individual acts and views the world, with products, such as the Glow Recipe toner, Tasman UGGS, and more recently, the Snoopy puffer jacket plush, that have become popular. But, in the past, social media has also influenced major points in history. To name a few, the ACAB Movement, Black Lives Matter, the Me Too movement, and protests against the overturning of Roe v. Wade are examples of how social media has impacted the real world.
Unfortunately, as progressive as these platforms of communication may be, they also lead to chains of misinformation that bleed into detrimental misunderstandings. One example of this is @realtalkingfish on TikTok; this account is essentially the Spongebob fish being a news anchor and giving brief summaries of news happening around the world. While this is fun to entertain oneself with some celebrity drama and fun facts or random events from around the world, the issue arises when accounts like this are claiming to be giving full news stories when they have no actual validity and have no reason not to lie. A particular strategy that these accounts might use is fear mongering; this is when they will exaggerate, or even lie, about a story to get a group of people worked up or afraid over something that, in reality, is not a large concern.
Another tactic that goes along with fear mongering is fake activists or “performative activists”. An example of “performative activists” are the people who posted a black square during BLM but did nothing. The black square was a symbol used to show that an individual was a supporter of the BLM movement. These fake activists would post online about how unfair and unjust society is, but they never would go to actual protests. Another popular example is these people shaming those that purchase clothing from SHEIN, an online shopping website notorious for their questionable and unethical business tactics. Some of these same people will then do a haul from H&M, despite numerous allegations of H&M also infringing upon child labor laws.
However, one of the worst issues of misinformation, fear mongering, and fake activism is with the recent boycotts caused by the Israel-Palestine War.
For a brief background on this topic, the states of Israel and Palestine are currently in conflict over land borders and land control. Most of the fighting is happening in the Gaza Strip, which is located between Israel and Egypt but is owned and populated by Palestinians. However, even though it is owned by Palestine, Israel had been illegally controlling it under the justification that it was for “defense against the Hamas attacks,” because Hamas is a Palestinian group that was created to resist the governance and beliefs of the Israeli people.
Currently, even though this label is repulsive, one of the “trends” across social media is the boycott of Starbucks and Mcdonalds because of their alleged support of Israel in the war. However, both of these situations are not an accurate representation of the franchise as a whole, but instead appear as such due to the spread of misinformation via social media. At the moment, the Starbucks boycott is the most well known and supported. The general idea of the movement is that Starbucks is a supporter of Palestine, “funded their genocides,” and is Islamophobic. This came from when the Starbucks Workers Union made a post on X, formally known as Twitter, that stated “Solidarity with Palestine!” And of course, this made its way all over the internet. And since then, numerous creators have been showing their “activism” by participating in the Starbucks boycott and shaming anyone who still purchases from the establishment. Unfortunately, a crucial detail that gets lost in most of these stories across the media is that the post was made by a workers union page, not the official Starbucks page. At the moment, the Starbucks company is suing the union and demanding that they do not affiliate themselves with the Starbucks name or logo on social media. Following this, according to AP News, which is deemed credible by Media Bias Fact Check, the employees of the union admitted in their lawsuit that the tweet was posted without the authorization of the union leaders. Even with Starbucks’ attempts to remain neutral in this conflict, people are twisting their apology statement into support for Israel and hate for Palestine. Or creating further conflict by saying how Starbucks doesn’t support their union and suing them makes it look like a horrible establishment. Even though they the union is getting sued because the union made a decision that negatively impacted the whole corporation without approval.
Additionally, another chain of misinformation that people have been spreading is that Starbucks is somehow funding Israel and is therefore supporting the genocides happening in Gaza, but as of now there is no definite and credible evidence of this. Starbucks does not have any stores open within Israel and hasn’t for years, but influencers will often judge an establishment because of the opinions of their individual workers, then will utilize fear mongering to make it seem like a much bigger issue than it actually is. Nonetheless, these performative activists are continuing their boycott and spreading misinformation about this conflict unnecessarily.
The case has been the same with the current McDonald’s boycott. The reasoning that has been spread around for this is that the Mcdonald's corporation has been sending free meals to Israel in attempts to aid the war effort. “Activists” have deemed this as a reason to boycott the establishment and have been posting butchered or twisted accounts of these events. However, any quick look at any credible news source shows that the donation of food to Israel was not a move done by the company as a whole - but instead, the decision of individual stores within Israel. Meaning that the company did not have any say nor influence in these decisions, thus, these actions cannot be used as a reflection of the corporation’s beliefs. Many individual franchises have released statements to dissolve ties between them and the Israel stores, some even pledging aid to Gaza. For example, a McDonald’s located in Saudi Arabia posted online, "In regard to the news that McDonald's in Israel was donating meals. We affirm that it was an individual decision on their part," and then explicitly stated "Neither global McDonald's nor us nor any other country had a role or relationship with that decision, neither directly nor indirectly" only further emphasizing why this boycott of global establishments is unnecessary and, to be frank, idiotic.
In summation, the amount of people on social media at such an influential age isn’t a cause for concern in itself, but once influencers begin introducing these topics and information onto said platforms then it becomes an issue, especially in extreme cases such as literal wars. Because once one video blows up and people begin to align with those thoughts, more creators begin to jump on to the bandwagon and make their own videos - and suddenly there are boycotts for actions that companies did not even do. This becomes even worse when the viewers follow every word someone says; if they have 1 million followers, or if they’re verified, or if they have thousands of likes, it does not matter because they still can not substitute a legitimate news media source - yet most of the general population fails to see this.
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