Fighting Social Media Disinformation: Pro-Israel Students on Clean-Up Duty
By Hannah Rothbard
Aside from cooking videos and pictures of my friends’ weekend parties, my Instagram feed is constantly flooded with Zionist activists’ attempts to clean up disinformation about Israel. Early last month, Zionist posters were on a new mission — cleaning up the mess caused by Nike’s decision to end sales with Israeli retailers. Nike, already having dissolved relationships with Amazon and Zappos in 2019, made the decision in line with their Consumer Direct Offense as part of a plan to connect directly with consumers by driving them toward Nike’s own website and stores, not because of politics. Social media users, however, co-opted Nike’s narrative to fit within an anti-Israel agenda, calling it a victory for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement.
One such example is a post from the Instagram account @Muslim (1.3 million followers) which misleadingly frames Nike’s decision as a BDS victory. The first slide features text reading: “Nike will stop selling its products in Israeli stores, and will be terminating all sales.” Social media users sharing this post and similar posts across platforms piled on this illusion, saying Nike was following “in the footsteps of Ben and Jerry’s,” who, unlike Nike, explicitly described their company’s recent withdrawal from the West Bank as a politically motivated decision. In the wake of this mass dissemination of falsities via social media, traditional news outlets and Pro-Israel young adults find themselves in a familiar position of damage control.
In response to events like Nike’s withdrawal, the expectation is for journalists to fact-check and publish articles which correct the narrative, and for Pro-Israel young adults to post their truth on social media, which inevitably turns into a draining game of he-said-she-said. Proud Zionists must take to our phones in an attempt to correct disinformation without the backing or credentials of large news outlets. With this trend in mind, I asked Yaakov Katz, Editor-in-Chief of the Jerusalem Post, how he saw the role of journalism changing in response to social media disinformation, and whether or not he considered it a national security threat to Israel. Mr. Katz replied:
“I think that social media presents a huge challenge to democracies like Israel which are in a constant battle for legitimacy. The reason is because Israel’s adversaries — e.g. Hamas and Hezbollah — can spread disinformation without accountability, while Israel — a democracy and country that abides by rule of law — cannot. This creates an imbalance in the way information is spread and the way it is believed by people and even traditional news outlets. What this means is that we — the traditional news organizations — have an even greater responsibility to fact check, to review, and to ensure that the information that we are gleaning and citing is legitimate and accurate.”
Despite Israeli news organizations holding themselves to higher standards, the frightening fact is that exposure to false information has a lasting effect on people even when they are made aware of its mistruth. An article published by the Jerusalem Post in 2019 titled “Spread of disinformation on social media should concern democratic world” explores this phenomena, citing the work of psychologist Neil Levy, who warns that even “sophisticated consumers are very much at risk” of being influenced by fake news. This makes the corrective work by journalists and social media activists more exhausting and severely limits its potential for success.
We should be quite wary of this phenomenon, considering current news consumption statistics. While most American adults prefer to get their news directly from news websites over social media (according to a 2020 Pew Research Center study), the statistics show a different trend for the youngest age group surveyed — Americans ages 18–29 indicated that they primarily consume news via social media. This should serve as a marker for the direction in which we are headed, given that this age group is the first to grow up natively using social media. As more and more people come of age in the digital era, we can logically predict that social media, despite its lack of credibility, will be an increasingly preferred source of news.
The same study also revealed that while 53% of American adults consume news from social media “often” or “sometimes,” 59% of American adults who consume news from social media indicated that they expect much of it to be false. A study conducted at the Israel Democracy Institute found similar results — while 76% of Israelis indicated that they get their news from social media at least once a day, only 22% of Jewish Israelis and 29% of Arab Israelis indicated that they believed social media has mostly accurate news. Together, these studies reflect a trend in which people are consuming information that they do not trust, and as studies show, will still be influenced by it.
Rather than deferring responsibility out of fear of impracticality or backlash, we should work towards more practical solutions, such as government regulations that treat social media platforms like publishers and hold them to the same standards of accountability and credibility. I’m not saying people with platforms shouldn’t use them to educate or express their opinions, but rather that their educational posts should be fact-checked and their opinions taken as just that. This could see an end to the circulation of blasphemous infographics and maps taken out of context to confuse readers and push false narratives.
These reforms would help everyone who reads news online and could also mean that Pro-Israel college students will no longer have to continuously retell Israel’s centuries-old narrative or explain that you can be both a Zionist and a liberal. Until then, Zionist students will continue our clean-up duty as best we can. In the meantime, I can offer a few suggestions: Always cite your sources in Instagram posts to establish credibility; even better, write an article instead of an infographic! This way, you are not only giving credibility back to traditional news outlets, but you have more room to expand upon your points for those who actually want to learn more. Lastly, do not hesitate to reach out for assistance if you feel nervous about speaking up or need help writing or fact-checking. CAMERA on Campus, Jewish on Campus, and the Anti-Defamation League are great resources for tackling anti-Israel biases and behaviors rooted in antisemitism.
Disclaimer: Organisations mentioned in this piece reflect the values of the author, not necessarily TIJ at large.
