It has been slightly over a year since Israel invaded Gaza, destroying houses, infrastructure, and most importantly LIVES. Lives of innocent people; children, elderly and sick. An estimate published by Oxfam is that within this year the number of killed Palestinian women and children has been higher than the equivalent number of any other single conflict all over the world in the past twenty years.
This year of death and devastation for the people in Gaza, is also marked by an enormous effort from the part of Israel supporters. They are trying to mask the crimes that the state of Israel is committing and justify its actions with the pretext of the fight against terrorism. All these, by using their strong lobbying skills and propaganda to the interest of Israel, in search of legalizing its actions in the eyes of the world.
Born and raised in Thessaloniki, a city where both Jewish and Palestinian populations have lived for many decades and influenced the character of, I couldn’t be indifferent to the developments of the area. Also, being acquainted with people from both sides, I am familiar with their approach on social media mainly, where they are very active sharing their viewpoints and their support to each side respectively.
As I am highly interested in misinformation and propaganda which are very common and easy to employ in the digital world, I somehow felt compelled to follow the digital activism and its communication as a field. More specifically, I seek to look into how they are extensively used on social media and the online news in order to favor and justify the inhumane actions of Israel against Palestinians. The support Palestinian people are receiving both in the form of protests and in the digital medium is another case worth examining as well.
